Ontario Concrete Pro rebuilds the flatwork that was poured when Montclair's tract blocks went up in the 1950s and 1960s. Free estimate, measured on your own lot and written before anything is booked.
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Montclair was built almost all at once. It incorporated in 1956 as Monte Vista, took its present name two years later, and the tracts that filled its grid went up inside about fifteen years.
That is the whole argument of this page. A city of roughly 39,000 people whose houses share one build-out shares one concrete schedule with them, and the flatwork poured alongside those houses is now 65 to 70 years old against the 30 to 40 years a well-built slab is designed for. It is why failure here shows up by the street rather than by the house: one owner calls about a cracked drive and the two either side of them are a season behind. Very little of it has ever been replaced.
The ground is the second half of it. Montclair lies on the alluvial fan below San Antonio Canyon, so the soil is washed sand carrying gravel and cobble, and it coarsens the further north you go, a trench near Moreno Street turns up rock a trench near the Chino line does not. That is good drainage and a poor bearing surface at once: it moves under a slab unless it is cut out, graded and compacted first, the step a 1950s tract pour rarely got. Your lot is on the USDA Web Soil Survey.
Eight jobs, and on a block of 65-year-old tract houses they tend to arrive together: the drive, the walk to the front door and the garage floor were one pour, so they wear out on one schedule.
The driveway poured with a Montclair tract house in the late 1950s has now given 65 years against the 30 to 40 a slab is built for. We take it back to the street apron, recut the base into the fan gravel beneath it, then pour four inches with joints on a ten-foot grid.
Montclair back lots were laid out deep, and most already carry a thin slab off the rear door that the builder threw in with the house. A patio poured now goes down at full thickness on compacted base, pitched away from the wall so February runoff does not stand at the sill.
Stamped work is how a 1960s Montclair front yard changes without the footprint changing. The drive and the walk are poured as normal, then a pattern and a release color are worked in before the surface sets. On loose fan sand the base decides whether it stays flat.
The public walk across the front of a Montclair lot is the owner's to keep safe, and these panels are the ones the tract was finished with, lifted where the street trees planted alongside them got underneath. We replace panel by panel and reset the grade curb to lot.
Garage floors on Montclair's 1950s and 1960s tracts went down on a sand cushion with no steel in them, and 65 years of parking on the same two strips reads as cracking along the wheel lines. The replacement is poured over compacted base with mesh through it.
Exposed aggregate, a broom field inside a banded border, saw-cut scoring, color mixed through the load, a decorative finish is chosen at the pour and cannot be added later. Where every house on a Montclair street shares one 1960s plan, the front is yours to decide.
Montclair sits on the apron of the San Antonio fan and the ground falls away south, so a lot cut flat for a pad in 1957 is often holding its neighbor's soil up on a leaning block wall. A poured wall sits on a footing below the gravel, with drain rock and weeps behind it.
Interior slabs in these houses were poured before a vapor barrier was standard, which is what lifts glued flooring and leaves a damp line along the base of the wall. A replacement floor goes over new sheeting and base gravel, flat enough to tile straight onto.
Permits for flatwork, walls and slabs are issued by the City of Montclair's building counter at City Hall on Benito Street, and we file them. That means the application, the drawings the counter wants for a retaining wall, and the inspection dates, you are not asked to sit in the queue or to be home for a call you did not book.
The city is small enough to know by its cross streets. Central Avenue and Mission Boulevard carry most of the traffic, the older grid sits between Monte Vista and Benson, and around the transit center and Montclair Place the north end of town has been redeveloping for years, which is where we see new slab and new walls rather than replacement. South and west of there it is still 1950s tract on its first driveway.
Montclair is 5.7 miles from our yard, a straight run west along Holt, so it is a short haul for the mixer and a crew that can be on your lot early and off the drive before the school run. The same crews work Upland, Claremont, Pomona and Chino, all inside a few minutes of the county line, so the truck is not making a special trip to reach your block.
Four stages. On a Montclair block the first one usually turns out to cover a whole run of flatwork rather than a single slab, so the estimate is written panel by panel.
You hear back within 1 business day, and we book the visit to your Montclair lot for a day inside that same week.
We open the subgrade, see how much cobble is in it, measure every panel you want out and write the estimate there and then.
We file at City Hall, hold the inspection dates on the calendar and confirm a start once the paperwork has cleared.
Demolition, base, forms, pour, finish, then the finished run is walked with you against the estimate you signed.
Most Montclair calls start at the driveway and end up taking in the walk and the garage floor, because they were one pour and they are failing together. Ask for all of it on the estimate, one base and one joint layout instead of three, and build it in stages.
Reviews
Left after the final walk-through, on jobs across the Inland Empire, driveways, patios, garage floors and walls, on lots much like the ones on your street.
“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.”
What people on these blocks want settled before they book: what is under the slab, who signs it off, and how long the front of the house is a building site.
Four things, and none of them is the concrete. How much of the old slab has to come out and where it can be loaded; how deep we dig before the fan gravel gives a surface worth compacting, which is deeper in the north of the city; the width at the street apron, since that panel is thicker than the rest; and whether the walk and the garage floor come out in the same visit. All four are measured on your lot.
Usually yes for anything structural or anything that changes drainage or the street apron, and the City of Montclair issues it from the building counter at City Hall on Benito Street. A retaining wall over the height the code sets needs drawings with the application. We file it, hold the inspection date and close the permit out, which matters at resale, because unpermitted work at the approach turns up in escrow.
Because the city sits on what San Antonio Canyon washed out of the mountains. Every storm for thousands of years carried sand, gravel and cobble down the fan and dropped the coarse material first, which is why a trench in north Montclair turns up rounded rock the size of a fist and one near the Chino line turns up sand. It drains beautifully and carries nothing on its own, so the base is cut, graded and compacted.
Demolition and base on a standard Montclair two-car drive is a day, forms and the pour the next, and the slab is walked on after a couple of days and driven on after seven. The Portland Cement Association is the reference on why that week is not padding: concrete gains strength by curing, not by drying. We give you the date you can park on it before we start.
If they are lifted, yes, and on these blocks they usually are, the street trees went in with the tract and their roots are under the original panels now. Doing them in the same visit means one saw crew, one demolition load and one grade set from curb to lot, so the front of the house comes back level in a single run. It is also the part a neighbor trips on, and the owner in front of it answers for that.
Everything inside 25 miles of the yard, 20 towns in total. The nearest to Montclair are Upland to the north, Claremont and Pomona over the county line to the west, Chino to the south and Ontario to the east, and the same crews work all of them. If you are on a Montclair street where several houses want work done at once, say so when you call, a run of neighboring lots is scheduled as one job.
Twenty towns inside a 25-mile radius, all worked by the crews that work Montclair, out of the same yard on Holt Boulevard.
Open the Ontario Office in Google Maps Call, or send the form with the address and what needs taking out. You hear back within 1 business day and the visit is free, whether the job turns out to be one panel or the whole front of the house.