Ontario Concrete Pro pours driveways, patios and walls across Chino Hills, 9.2 miles from the Holt Boulevard yard. On a graded hillside pad what sits under the slab decides how long it lasts.
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Almost every house in Chino Hills stands on a pad that was engineered rather than found, the hills were graded into building benches before the streets went in.
Grading a hillside tract means cutting into the slope on one side of a pad and filling out over the hollow on the other. The two halves behave differently under load: undisturbed cut is dense and stays put, while engineered fill goes on compressing for years. A slab laid across that daylight line spans two soils at once, and the crack that follows is straight, running where the grading plan drew the boundary and not where the joints were cut. Your soils are on the USDA Web Soil Survey.
The clay is the other half of it. The ground through these hills is expansive: it swells through a wet winter and shrinks back over the summer, lifting a slab at its edges and setting it down again. That yearly movement is why thickness alone fixes nothing here, since a slab poured straight onto unprepared clay simply moves with the clay. The base is built to break that contact, and the steel is there so the slab spans a soft patch instead of folding into it.
Eight jobs that come up on Chino Hills property, a city incorporated in 1991 whose tracts were cut into the hills from the 1980s onward, so almost every lot is an engineered pad rather than flat native ground.
A Chino Hills drive runs up a grade and crosses the line where the pad was cut into the hill on one side and filled out on the other. We deepen the base across that join and carry reinforcement through it, so the slab does not part along the seam the grading plan drew.
Back yards here are terraced, and the usable flat sits between the house and a slope. A patio on that ledge is poured with fall away from the toe of the bank and a drain line behind it, because winter water off the hill reaches the slab before it reaches the lawn.
Most Chino Hills tracts run an architectural review, and the board signs off exterior finishes before work starts. We bring color and pattern samples to the estimate and write the specification the association asks for, so a pour date is not lost waiting on an approval.
Walks in the hillside tracts follow the street's own fall and meet driveway aprons at an angle, so a lifted panel is a trip point on a slope rather than on the level. We replace to the existing line and cut joints on the panel module the tract was built to.
Garages on Chino Hills houses often sit at the low corner of a sloping pad, with the floor taking whatever runs down the drive each winter. Replacing one means a graded base, sheeting under the slab and a floor pitched to the door, so it dries out instead of holding damp.
Hillside frontages are short and steep, so the drive and the entry are read together from the street below. Exposed aggregate or a scored band across both ties them into one surface, and that texture keeps grip on a fall that a smooth trowel finish takes away.
Retaining walls are routine here rather than exceptional, because a Chino Hills lot is a bench cut into a slope. A poured wall on a footing set into undisturbed cut, drained through gravel and pipe behind the stem, holds a grade that stacked block on shallow ground will not.
Lower levels and garage conversions are common on the lots that step down at the back, and each wants an interior floor poured level over a vapor barrier. We read the moisture in the pad before ordering, since a hillside slab takes water the valley floor never has to shed.
Permits come from Building and Safety at the City of Chino Hills, and anything altering a hillside grade, or a wall the city's narrow exemption does not cover, goes through plan check before one is issued. Most tracts here also run their own architectural review, so a finish the city allows can still need the association's sign-off. We file the city side and hand you what the board wants to see.
The town reads by era rather than by street. Los Serranos in the south west is the oldest part, laid out around a 1920s golf course on comparatively level ground and built out slowly since. Everything north and east of it, Butterfield Ranch, the streets off Soquel Canyon Parkway, the lots above Carbon Canyon Road, went in from the 1980s onward as graded tracts, each with its own pad grade and its own walls at the property lines.
The yard is 9.2 miles out, down Euclid Avenue and across on Grand, which puts a ready-mix load on your pad inside its working window rather than at the end of one. The same run lets us place a steep drive across two mornings in strips instead of racing one truck down the fall. Driveway replacement on a grade is the job we schedule that way most often.
Four steps from the first call to the closed permit. On a hillside lot the second one decides the rest, because what the grading left under the pad sets the base, the steel and the schedule.
Tell us the street and what you want poured. We answer within 1 business day and book a walk of your Chino Hills lot.
We find where cut meets fill, measure the grade and the area, and write the estimate on your property before leaving it.
We file with Chino Hills Building and Safety, supply what your association's review asks for, and set a date once both are back.
Base, steel, pour, finish, cure dates. We walk the work with you, close the permit, and the workmanship guarantee is written.
Send the address and what you want built. We come out, find the line the grading left under your slab and write a figure for the work as specified, nothing owed for the visit and nothing quoted before we have stood on the pad.
Reviews
Reviews from across the towns we cover, Chino Hills among them. Every one is for work our own crew measured on the lot, wrote up in front of the owner and poured to the estimate that was signed.
“Our place off Euclid is from the 1920s and the drive still ran back to the alley. They replaced 400 square feet at 5 inches, matched the fall to the alley apron and cut the joints the same day. Victor was there from start to finish.”
“We built an ADU in the back garden and needed the slab done properly. They over-excavated the old dairy ground, brought in engineered fill and poured to the soil report. It passed inspection first time, which is not what I expected.”
“The warehouse yard on Jurupa Street was breaking up under the forklifts and we could not shut down to fix it. Ontario Concrete Pro poured 2,800 square feet at 6 inches over two weekends so we never stopped shipping. A year on the joints are still tight.”
Six things we are asked on hillside lots: what the grading does to a slab, who approves the finish, how a steep drive is poured, and what changes the figure written on the estimate.
Because it is following the join between cut and fill. The pad was made by cutting into the hill and filling out over the low side, and the two soils go on settling at different rates for years. A slab poured across that boundary spans both, so it parts in a straight line that pays no attention to the control joints. Deepening the base along the line and carrying steel through it stops it coming back.
In most Chino Hills tracts, yes. The architectural review covers exterior surfaces, and that takes in color, pattern and often the border on a front drive or entry walk. The approval runs alongside the city permit rather than after it, so we hand you samples and a written specification at the estimate and you submit them while the plan check is still running.
Building and Safety at the City of Chino Hills. The city amended the state exemption in its own code, so a retaining wall escapes a permit only where all five hold: it stands no more than 4 feet tall, holds back less than 3 feet of soil, the retained soil slopes less than 4 to 1, nothing surcharges it such as a drive above, and every part of it sits 5 feet clear of a property line. Miss one and we file the permit.
Yes, and it is placed in sections rather than as one pour. Concrete on a fall wants to travel downhill while it is still plastic, so a steep drive goes in from the bottom up in strips, with a stiffer mix and a broomed or textured surface for grip underfoot and under tires. Forms and joint layout are set to the measured grade before any concrete is ordered.
Four things, and each is named on the written estimate. How much of the pad has to be dug out and rebuilt where fill sits under the slab. The grade, and how much of the pour it forces into sections. Thickness and reinforcement, set by what drives on it. And the finish, since a stamped or aggregate surface is more labor than a broom. A narrow hillside street can decide truck access too.
We reply within 1 business day and usually walk a Chino Hills property inside the same week. The yard is 9.2 miles off on Holt Boulevard, short enough that a site visit does not have to be batched with other work to be worth the drive. Victor Salgado holds the CSLB C-8 license the work is built under, and there is liability insurance on every job we pour.
Chino Hills is one of 20 towns inside the 25 mile radius we work. Its neighbors sit on both sides of the county line, and each one has its own page, because the ground and the permit counter change with the boundary.
Open the Ontario Office in Google Maps Call the yard or send your address. We hold a CSLB C-8 license and liability insurance on every job, and the estimate is measured and written on the pad the concrete will be poured on.