Rio Hondo El Monte Concrete pours driveways, patios, pool decks and parkway walks in Temple City, 3 miles from our office. The job is measured at your address before a date is set.
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Two thirds of Temple City homes are owner-occupied and the median resident is 43, so the drives we replace here were poured for a family that stayed, then rebuilt or extended rather than moved.
A single-width drive poured in 1952 for one car now has two parked on it, one wheel on the slab and one on the lawn, and the edge that carried no weight for fifty years is the edge that has broken away. The same thing happens at the back. The original patio stops where the original kitchen wall stood, and once the house has been pushed out to the setback the slab is a strip too narrow for a table. A two-story rebuild on a lot that kept its 1950s apron is the third case.
So every Temple City job starts by measuring what stands on the lot now rather than what the old slab was drawn for. A drive is widened to the garage door it serves, poured 4 inches thick on 4 inches of compacted base and 5 inches where a trailer parks, with the old edge cut clean and doweled so the join does not open into a lip. A patio is set out from the new wall to a line that clears a table, and where a 1950s slab is sound we cut and keep it rather than break it out.
Temple City is a town of 1940s and 1950s ranch houses on flat lots, and one house at a time is being taken down and rebuilt larger. Nearly every job here is the concrete around a house catching up with the house.
Most Temple City drives were poured one car wide in the 1950s and now carry two, which is why the edges fail first. We keep the sound center where it serves, add a doweled strip to the width of the garage door, and pour it 4 inches thick on compacted base.
A ranch-house patio in Temple City stops where the original back wall stood, and after an extension it is a strip nobody can sit on. We set the new slab out from the new threshold to a line that clears a table, jointed every 10 feet and finished to match.
Stamped work in Temple City is asked for at the front of rebuilt houses, where the owner wants the apron to match the stone or paver entry the architect drew. We stamp a 4 inch slab in the pattern chosen, color it through the mix, and seal it in two coats.
The walks in front of Temple City houses are the city's, and the strip they cross is the city's too, so a lifted panel outside your house is a Public Works matter first. Our own work is the path from the walk to the porch, poured on the lot in panels that drain to the lawn.
Temple City garages are being turned into living space under the state's ADU rules, and a 1950s garage slab is neither flat nor level enough to floor over. We test it for moisture, grind or overlay it to a flat plane, and where it is broken we pour it new on a vapor barrier.
An exposed aggregate walk or patio suits the older streets of Temple City better than a stamp does, because it reads as the same era as the house. We seed the surface with the pea gravel the valley is built on, wash it proud, and saw the joints in straight lines.
Temple City is flat, so a retaining wall here holds a raised bed or a step in a rebuilt yard rather than a hillside. Even a low wall is footed below the topsoil and drained behind the stem, because a planter wall that holds water tips within a few years.
An interior floor in Temple City is usually the slab for a garage conversion or a new room on the back of a house. We pour it on a 10 mil vapor barrier, trowel it flat enough for tile or wood, and tie it to the existing foundation with dowels so the two do not part at the door.
Walter Temple set out the town in 1923, and Las Tunas Drive is still its main street, with City Hall on it. The Building and Safety Division at City Hall permits anything structural in a yard, a retaining wall above the height the code allows without one or a footing that carries a cover. Flatwork at grade on your own lot needs none. The parkway between the sidewalk and the curb belongs to the city, and work there takes an encroachment permit from Public Works, which we file for you.
No freeway crosses Temple City, which is why the drive from our office is surface streets the whole way, Lower Azusa Road to Temple City Boulevard or up Rosemead Boulevard, and a crew is on a street off Baldwin Avenue in a quarter of an hour. The mixer comes the same way, and on the narrower streets south of Las Tunas Drive we book the truck for early morning, before the school run fills Temple City Boulevard, because a chute kept waiting is concrete setting in the drum.
The ground here is the same as under our own yard, sand and rounded gravel left by the San Gabriel River, and it treats concrete kindly. It drains through a wet week, it compacts in two passes, and it does not heave, so a cracked Temple City slab has almost always cracked at the edge under a load it was never meant to carry rather than from the ground beneath it. We probe the subgrade all the same, because a 1950s builder filled a tree hole with whatever was to hand.
One visit, one written figure, one crew from tear-out to sealing. Nothing is agreed until the site has been measured, so the number on the page is the number on the invoice.
Ismael Duarte walks the lot, measures the slab against the house that stands there now, checks the fall to the street and photographs the gate.
The old slab is cut, broken and hauled, sound sections are kept where they serve, and 4 inches of Class 2 base is laid and plate-compacted.
Parkway work goes to Temple City Public Works on an encroachment permit and a wall or a footing to Building and Safety. We file both.
Poured before the heat of the day, joints cut that afternoon, walk on it after 24 hours and park on it after 7 days. The lawn is left as it was.
Send the form or call, and we ring back within 1 business day to set a time. Every estimate is measured and written on site, and it costs nothing whether or not you go ahead.
Reviews
Reviews left on Google and Facebook by homeowners across the towns we pour in. Temple City is among them, and the drives and patios behind these reviews are the ones described above.
“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 owners in Temple City ask before they book, from what moves the estimate on a ranch-house lot to which counter a permit goes to and how long a drive is out of use.
Whether the old slab is kept or broken out, then the width. A Temple City drive widened from one car to two keeps its sound center and adds a doweled strip either side, which is less tear-out and less haulage than a full replacement. Depth moves it next, since a slab a trailer parks on is poured an inch thicker. Every estimate is measured and written on site, so nothing is priced from a photograph.
The Building and Safety Division at Temple City City Hall on Las Tunas Drive, for anything structural such as a retaining wall or a footing under a patio cover. A drive, a patio or a garage floor at grade on your own lot needs no permit. The strip between the sidewalk and the curb is city property, so a new approach across it goes to Public Works on an encroachment permit, which we apply for as part of the job.
In about a quarter of an hour. Our office is 3 miles away, and with no freeway between the two towns the route is Lower Azusa Road to Temple City Boulevard or straight up Rosemead Boulevard. We ring back within 1 business day to fix the visit, and because the drive is short we can measure a Temple City job on the way to or from another one.
Rarely. Temple City sits on sand and rounded gravel laid down by the San Gabriel River, which drains fast, compacts well and does not swell when wet, so a slab here does not heave the way one on clay does. The cracks we see are at the edges, where a 1950s single-width drive has had a second car parked half on the lawn for years, and the answer is to widen the slab to the load rather than to patch the edge.
Nine days in most cases. Tear-out and base take a day, the pour takes a morning, and the slab carries a car after 7 days of curing. You can walk on it after 24 hours. For a house with one drive we set the pour for a Friday, so the week of curing runs with the car on the street and the slab is ready for the weekend after.
Yes, in two ways. A two-story rebuild usually has a wider garage than the bungalow it replaced, so the drive is widened to match the door and the apron at the curb is re-cut on an encroachment permit. At the back, the new wall stands where the old patio used to end, so the slab is set out fresh from the new threshold rather than patched onto a strip that is now too narrow to use.
Temple City shares its lines with Arcadia, San Gabriel and Rosemead, and we cover each of them from the same El Monte office. If your street sits on one of those lines, the page for the town next door describes the same crew.
Open the El Monte Office in Google Maps Send the form and we ring back within 1 business day to book the measure. The written estimate is free, and the slab carries a written guarantee against defects in how it was built.