Rio Hondo El Monte Concrete pours driveways, garage floors, patios and walls in South Monrovia Island, 4 miles up Peck Road from the yard. County land changes the permit, not the concrete.
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South Monrovia Island sits where the Santa Anita Wash and the Sawpit Wash come off the mountains and join to make the Rio Hondo, on the coarsest gravel of any town on our list.
The lake at Peck Road Water Conservation Park, on the neighborhood's southern edge, is a gravel pit that filled with water once the digging stopped, and it was dug there because the ground is rounded stone almost from the surface down. That gravel is as good a subgrade as concrete gets. It does not heave, it does not hold water, and it compacts in a few passes of the plate. What it does badly is hold a stake, so a form set on it walks, and it pulls the water out of a wet mix.
So we use the ground rather than fight it. The base is 4 inches of compacted Class 2 on top of native gravel, which is often firmer than the base. Stakes go deep and forms are checked twice before a pour. We wet the subgrade before the concrete goes down so it does not pull the water out of the mix, and steel goes through every driveway because a slab that will not settle can still crack under a truck if there is nothing in it.
South Monrovia Island is a county pocket of small lots between Monrovia and El Monte, built out in the 1940s and 1950s and used hard since, so what we pour here is mostly a driveway for 3 cars and a floor for the garage that became a room.
A South Monrovia Island driveway is the parking for the whole house, because the lots are narrow and the street is the only other place to leave a car. We pour it the full width the setback allows, 5 inches where the third car sits, with steel on an 18 inch grid.
A patio here is small and hard working. With lots this size the patio is the yard, so we run it to the fences, fall it to one drain rather than to a lawn there is none of, and pour 4 inches on compacted base. The gravel underneath drains fast, so the base is thin.
Stamped work in South Monrovia Island is usually a border or a walk rather than a whole slab, because a small frontage stamped edge to edge looks busier than it is. We stamp a band around a plain broom drive, color it in the mix, and seal it so the pattern outlasts the fashion.
Not every street here has a public walk, so the walk we pour is usually the one from the drive to the front door or down the side to the unit at the back. It is 3 feet wide, jointed every 4, broomed for grip, and where it meets a road with no curb we thicken the edge.
Garage floors in South Monrovia Island are 70 years old and were poured thin on the gravel with no steel, so most have cracked into plates. We break them out, compact the gravel already there, pour 4 inches with steel, and trowel the top flat enough for a coating or a room.
Exposed aggregate belongs here. The rounded stone under South Monrovia Island is the same stone we wash out of the surface of the pour, so the finish looks as if it came out of the lot, and it hides the tire marks and dust a working driveway collects on a plain gray slab.
A retaining wall in South Monrovia Island holds a raised bed or the step down to a lowered garage, not a hillside, because the ground is level. We footing it below the gravel line, tie the steel from footing to stem, drain the back, and above 4 feet it goes through plan check.
The interior floor we pour most here is for a garage conversion or a new unit at the back, and the gravel underneath makes it a straightforward pour. We lay a vapor barrier over compacted base, pour 4 inches, trowel it flat for tile, and put the joints under the future walls.
Our yard is 4 miles south on Peck Road, the road that runs through the middle of the neighborhood, so a crew is here in 10 minutes. South Monrovia Island is unincorporated, so no city issues its permits. They come from the Los Angeles County Department of Public Works, Building and Safety Division, and the plan check is the county's, which runs on a different timetable to the city counters in Monrovia and El Monte on either side. We file it and we allow for it in the start date.
The streets between Live Oak Avenue and the Monrovia line are 1940s and 1950s houses on small lots, and with 63 in every 100 owned rather than rented the work is for people who will keep it. A lot this size with a driveway down one side, a garage at the back and often a second unit behind it has almost no ground left, so most jobs are barrowed from a truck in the street rather than chuted, and we plan the pour around that.
The washes are channeled in concrete where they pass the neighborhood, so the yards do not flood, but the ground under them is the washes' old bed and it drinks water. That is why a slab here is never the one that heaves in winter and why we skip the drain under a patio that we would lay in South El Monte. Summer is the season to watch. The gravel dries a pour from below, so from June to September we pour at first light and keep the slab wet for the first 3 days.
Four stages, and the second is the county's. Nothing is poured until the permit is in hand where one is needed, and the figure is measured at the house before any date is set.
Ismael Duarte measures the slab, checks the fall to the street and the room for a truck, and confirms whether the county needs to see it.
We file with Los Angeles County Building and Safety where the job needs a permit, and carry it through plan check without you.
The old slab comes out, the native gravel is compacted, 4 inches of base go over it, forms are staked deep and checked twice.
The pour takes a morning. Joints are cut the same day, the slab is kept wet for 3 days, walked on after 24 hours, driven on after 7.
Call or send the form and we reply within 1 business day to fix a time. The yard is 10 minutes away, the visit costs nothing, and the county permit is our job rather than yours. Every estimate is measured and written on site.
Reviews
Reviews on Google and Facebook from homeowners across the towns on our list. South Monrovia Island is one of them, and the drives and floors they describe were built as this page says.
“Our drive had sunk where the water line went in years ago and you could feel it in the car. They dug the soft fill right out, rolled clean base into it and put 540 square feet down at four inches. Ismael was here at seven in the morning and the saw went over it before he went home.”
“A ficus outside our place on Ramona had lifted two panels and we were getting complaints about it. They sawed out on the joints, cut the roots back behind a barrier, laid seventy feet of new walk and took care of the encroachment permit themselves. Nobody catches a foot on it now.”
“We use the garage as a workshop and the old floor was cracked right across, with the edges crumbling away wherever you swept. It came out, a heavy sheet went down over the sand, and five inches of new floor went on top. A year of trolley jacks and there is not a mark on it.”
What people here ask before booking, most of all who issues the permit when there is no city hall, and after that what the gravel means for the figure, the schedule and the finished slab.
Not the concrete, only the paperwork. The permit is the county's rather than a city's and plan check can take longer, so a job that needs one starts later, not dearer. What moves the figure in South Monrovia Island is the tear out. Almost every drive we pour replaces a cracked 1950s slab, and breaking it out and hauling it is a day of the job. Every estimate is measured and written on site, old slab included.
From the Los Angeles County Department of Public Works, Building and Safety Division, because the neighborhood has no city of its own. Monrovia City Hall will not take it, though it is closer. Flatwork at grade needs no permit. A wall over 4 feet, a slab under a room and any apron on a county road do, and we file it and meet the county inspector.
In 10 minutes, up Peck Road from the yard in El Monte. We reply within 1 business day to set the visit, and because the neighborhood is on the way to Monrovia and Arcadia a crew passes through it most weeks. A garage floor or a short walk is often fitted between two larger jobs rather than waiting for a week of its own.
No, and that is the point of the ground. The rounded stone under South Monrovia Island was laid down by the washes and compacts in a few passes, and it drains so fast that nothing under a slab stays wet enough to move. The cracking we see in the old drives is not settlement. It is a slab poured 3 inches thick with no steel, under 3 cars, for 70 years.
2 days on site and 7 to cure. Day one breaks out the old slab and compacts the base, day two is the pour and the joints. Then 24 hours before you walk on it and 7 days before a car goes on it. If the county needs to see it, the permit is the long part, and we tell you at the visit whether the job needs one before a date is promised.
Yes, both, and Duarte beyond them. The ground is the same wash gravel across the whole head of the Rio Hondo, so the work barely changes. The permit does. A house on the Monrovia side of the line files at Monrovia City Hall and one on the Arcadia side at Arcadia's, and we check which side a street is on before we file anything.
South Monrovia Island is ringed by Monrovia, Arcadia and El Monte, with Duarte beyond it along the 210, and we cover all of them from the yard. If your street is on a line, the neighboring page says which city's counter takes the permit.
Open the El Monte Office in Google Maps Send the form and we reply within 1 business day. The visit costs nothing, and the finished work carries a written workmanship guarantee against defects in how it was built.