Ontario Concrete Pro puts perimeter walls, stem walls and piers under new rooms and detached buildings, from the raised bungalow blocks off Euclid Avenue to the tract pads out in Ontario Ranch.
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Where this differs from a slab
A foundation installation is built in three stacked pieces rather than poured in one. A footing goes down onto material an engineer accepts, a wall carries up to the height the finished floor has to reach, and over the top of it goes a framed floor with a vented space beneath, or a slab poured inside the walls. What it answers is not what the ground under an area will carry, the question a slab is designed around. It is how far up the floor sits, and what the work is fastened to.
Victor Salgado has run Ontario Concrete Pro since 2020, with 14 years on Inland Empire crews behind that, and he takes the floor height himself before anything is drawn. Nearly all of it falls into two shapes. One is a room or a unit added to a house on the old grid, where the floor is already up off the dirt and the new one has to arrive level with it. The other is a detached building in the south of the city, standing on its own and setting its own level.
A foundation holds a building up, so none of it is exempt work: it is engineered, drawn, checked and inspected in the open. The set is filed under our CSLB C-8 concrete license, with liability insurance on every job, plan check runs through Ontario's Building Department, and code section R109.1.1 puts the inspector in the trench with forms up and steel tied and blocked before concrete is ordered. Every one carries a written workmanship guarantee against defects in how it was built.
Before the drawings
Step into a bungalow on the blocks off Euclid Avenue and the boards sit a foot or two above the garden on a perimeter wall with air under them. An addition has to land on that same plane to the quarter inch, so it is founded the way the house was, not the way a new build would be.
A door that binds on one jamb, a crack running up from a window head, a porch pulling off the wall: that is the footing under the corner moving, not the framing. What goes in then is new bearing driven under the wall already standing, in sections, while the building stays put.
Plenty of lots here drop a foot or more across a building line. A wall stepped down that fall takes the difference in its own height, and once it holds back over 48 inches of unbalanced ground with no permanent support top or bottom, it is designed rather than built to a table.
A workshop, a studio or a detached unit sets its own floor level and answers to nothing already there. That opens the choice between a wall with a crawl space beneath it and a slab poured on grade, and out in Ontario Ranch the second is usually the shorter of the two.
On every foundation we install
Eight things are on the estimate for every foundation we install, and none is an extra. Five of them an inspector kneels down to look at before the pour; the other three are what keeps the space under a floor dry enough that nobody opens it again.
The finished floor of whatever is already standing is shot indoors, before an engineer is asked to fix a wall height to it.
Bearing taken on undisturbed natural material, or on engineered fill that has been tested, a footing is allowed nothing else.
A No. 4 vertical every 4 feet at most, standard hook down to the footing bottom and 14 inches up into the wall, plus horizontals top and bottom.
Half-inch anchor bolts at 6 feet or closer, pushed 7 inches in and landed in the middle third of the plate, two to every plate length.
Cross ventilation formed through the wall at the ratio R408.2 sets, with an opening close to each outside corner so no pocket sits still.
An access opening at the code size, formed while the wall is poured instead of being knocked through it afterward.
Vegetation, roots and organic material taken off the ground under the floor, and the form lumber lifted out rather than left down there.
The trench inspection called by us and walked with the inspector, then seven days of damp curing before a framer loads the walls.
The four builds
The engineer settles which of these your drawings get, but it is worth following the choice, because it fixes how anybody gets under the floor afterward and how many days a crew stands on your lot.
| Option | Foundation type | Where it fits | Underneath | Days on site |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Raised perimeter | Rooms added to older raised houses | Vented crawl space you can work in | 10 to 14 days | Joists and girders span the walls |
| Stem wall and slab | A detached unit where the pad falls | Fill inside the walls, sealed over | 12 to 16 days | Two pours, wall then floor |
| Piers and grade beams | Bearing that has to be reached deep | Beams span, the soil carries little | 3 to 4 weeks | Drill rig on site for part of it |
| Underpinning | A wall already in the ground that dropped | New bearing driven beneath the old | 2 to 3 weeks | Building stays standing throughout |
Work joining a pre-war house on the grid nearly always comes down to the first row or the last. A separate building can be founded any of the four ways.
The stock here
The building being added to decides this job, and in this city a good share of them were finished before anybody poured a floor straight onto dirt.
Of the 58,000-odd housing units the Census counts in Ontario, about 3,600 went up before 1940 and 6,500 before 1950, one home in nine, nearly all on the grid the Chaffey brothers set out in 1882. Those bungalows stand on a shallow perimeter wall with a vented space under the boards, poured when foundations carried little or no steel. Adding a room to one means matching a floor plane that has had a century to move, and proving what the old wall is doing before a bar goes into it.
South of Riverside Drive the question turns over. Houses in Ontario Ranch sit on slabs on ground that was mass-graded when the tract went in, so a studio or a shop put up behind one sets its own level and the argument moves to the footing line: part of it can be bearing on the tract's compacted fill and part of it on the field that fill was placed over, and a footing spanning that seam is the one an engineer either deepens to a single stratum or turns into a grade beam.
How the work runs
Five stages, and the first happens inside the building rather than out on the dirt. Everything the engineer draws afterward is worked back from the height taken that morning, which is why it is measured rather than assumed.
Victor Salgado shoots the finished floor, opens the crawl space and reports what is carrying the building now.
Wall height, thickness, bar and the detail joining new work to old are all sized from that height and from the bearing below.
The stamped drawings go to plan check in our name, and the corrections come back to us rather than into your inbox.
Footings dug, dowels drilled and epoxied into anything existing, forms plumbed to the line, and the inspector walked through it open.
Concrete placed, bolts pressed in wet, forms struck and the walls kept damp a week before framing is allowed on them.
What you are buying
Square footage decides less on this job than it does on any flatwork. What is being bought is wall: how far up it comes, how long a line it runs, and what has to be done at the end where it meets something older. Every estimate is measured and written on site.
Every extra inch the floor sits up is another inch of poured wall right around the perimeter, and forms come in set panel heights.
A long thin plan buys more wall for the same room than a square one, so the shape on the drawing moves the figure before the size does.
A sound footing takes dowels in a morning. One that is crumbling or too narrow has to be underpinned before it can be joined to.
Where competent material sits deep, the price moves from wall to piers, and a drill rig and its spoil come with that.
Neither the visit nor the figure written at the property is charged for, and the Holt Boulevard office rings back within 1 business day of a form arriving. (909) 404-9502 or send us a message.
Ask for a visit and we come out, take the level inside the building, open the space beneath the floor and look at what is holding it up now. The figure is written at the property on that same visit, itemized, and nothing is owed either way.
From owners here
Three of the foundations we put in around this city, as the owners wrote them up on Google, Facebook and at the BBB. Two had to meet a floor that was already there; the third stands on its own out in the south of the city.
“Our place off Euclid Avenue is from 1924 and the hall floor sits 19 inches up. Victor shot the level inside before he would price anything, and the new bedroom met the old floor so closely that you cannot feel the doorway barefoot. Walls were poured 12 days after the digging started.”
“The back corner of the house had dropped and two doors would not shut. They worked along the wall in sections, put new bearing under it and never took the roof off anything. The cracks were pointed up afterward and eighteen months on nothing has opened again.”
“We put a 400 square foot studio behind our house in Ontario Ranch. Half the footing was on the tract fill and half was not, so they took the whole line down to one layer instead of guessing. It passed the steel inspection first time and the framers were on it in a fortnight.”
Common questions
What separates this from a slab, why a wall is priced by its height, what the code asks for under a wood floor, and what happens where new concrete has to be joined to hundred-year-old concrete.
A slab is one plane cast on ground made fit to carry it, and the design question is what lies under the whole area. This is a wall system: a footing, a wall built up to a set height, and a floor carried across the top of it. You need the second whenever the floor has to land at a height the ground is not at, whenever you want to reach the pipes later, or whenever what is already there is built that way.
Because the wall is what you are buying. Doubling the height of a perimeter doubles the concrete in it, the form panels, the ties and the bar, while the room sitting on top stays exactly the same size. Height is also the one figure nobody gets to choose on an addition, because the floor it has to meet is already built. Both the height and the run of wall are measured at the property.
Only where it has moved or is too small for what is being added. The old wall is opened at a few points first: how wide the footing is, how deep it goes, whether there is bar in it, whether the concrete is sound enough to drill. A wall in good order takes epoxied dowels in a morning. One spalling or undersized needs underpinning, which is C-21 work, that contractor puts the bearing in and we pour what ties to it.
Because untreated wood that close to bare ground rots. The Residential Code, at R304.1, calls for naturally durable or preservative-treated timber where joists come within 18 inches of exposed ground, girders within 12 and wood columns within 8. Building the wall tall enough to clear those figures is cheaper than treating everything, which is most of why older floors around here sit where they do.
One square foot of net opening for every 150 square feet of floor above it, and one of those openings within 3 feet of each outside corner, under R408.2. Lay an approved Class I vapor retarder over the ground and that drops to one square foot in 1,500. Access is a separate rule: R408.4 sets a minimum of 18 by 24 inches where it goes through the floor and 16 by 24 through the wall, and it cannot sit under a door.
A California-licensed engineer or architect. A foundation carries a building, so it never falls off the bottom of the permit list the way small work sometimes does, and the plan checker reads the calculations as well as the sheets. We file the set, take the corrections and open the work for the inspector. What we do not do is design it, and anybody offering to draw and pour their own is worth a second question.
Ten to fourteen days for a raised perimeter foundation and twelve to sixteen where a slab is cast inside the walls, then a week of damp curing before framing starts and full design strength at 28 days. Underpinning runs two to three weeks because it is done in short sections. Engineering and plan check come before all of it and are the half worth starting early.
How it was built. The bearing the footings reached, the bar size and its position in the wall, the dowels drilled into any old footing, the height and thickness we poured, and the flatness handed to the framer are all written on the estimate you sign. Ground moving past what the engineer designed for falls outside it, and so does damage from a later trade cutting into the wall.
Where we build
The eight closest towns to the Holt Boulevard office, with the straight-line distance beside each. Pre-war housing on raised walls carries on well past the city line, and 20 towns fall inside the 25-mile radius the crew works.
Four other pours that turn up on the same set of drawings: the pad laid flat instead of walled, the grade retained where a footprint is cut into a slope, the floor that goes inside afterward, and the openings sawn through what is already down.
The one-plane alternative, cast on ground built up to carry it.
Holding a cut back where a building line is benched into a slope.
The interior floor laid inside the walls once the shell is closed in.
Sawn openings through slabs and stem walls for pipes and doorways.
Ring the Holt Boulevard office or send the form and we will put a date in this week. We take the height, open up what is under the floor, and leave the design, the days and the total with you in writing before driving off.