Lots here step down off Blue Mountain, so a driveway runs on a grade and the yard behind it is usually held by a wall. Our Chicago Ave yard is 8.0 miles from Barton Road, south down the 215.
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Grand Terrace is roughly 12,595 people living on the skirt of Blue Mountain, and that hill sets the terms for nearly every yard of concrete poured in the city.
A level pad on this side of the valley was made, not found. Builders benched the lots in, cut into the hill on the uphill half, filled out over the downhill half, and the fill half is where flatwork goes. Cut ground is undisturbed and stays put; placed fill keeps compressing for years, and a slab bridging the line between the two breaks along it. That is why so much broken concrete in this city has one sound half and one that has dropped, rather than damage spread across the pour.
Water is the second half of it. Every driveway here is also a channel, and a run that falls toward the garage instead of away from it delivers a winter storm to the door slab. On the steeper streets we build cross-fall and a thickened downhill edge into the pour and put a drain at the low point, because a driveway that only carries cars is doing half its job on a hillside lot.
This is a city of about four square miles and there is fall across most of it, so the eight jobs below are as much about holding ground and steering water as about the slab on top of it.
A Grand Terrace drive is short, steep and often the only flat-ish ground on the lot. We pour it with cross-fall so water leaves at the side rather than at the garage, thicken the downhill edge where the fill starts, and break the grade at the top so a low car does not ground.
Back yards here fall away behind the house, and the usable part is whatever was benched flat. A poured patio can take that further out over the drop, stepped down in two levels rather than one, and pitched to shed toward the fall instead of ponding against a slab-on-grade wall.
The 1980s and 1990s houses on the upper streets have short, visible front approaches, and stamped concrete gives them a pattern and color in one pour. On a sloping approach we choose a texture with real tooth, since a slick stamped surface on a grade is a hazard by January.
Walks in this city run along streets that are themselves on a grade, so panels move at the joints as the ground creeps and lift where pepper tree roots get under them. We saw out the raised sections, cut the root beneath, and repour to the line the rest of the walk sets.
A garage at the bottom of a sloping drive is the low point of the whole property, and the slabs poured for these houses in the 1960s and 1970s went down thin over spoil. We take it back to the footing, lay barrier and mesh over compacted base, and finish it falling to the door.
Exposed aggregate, seeded finishes and integral color give a surface grip that a steel trowel takes away, which is what a hillside walk or pool surround needs. We place decorative work in the same pour as the slab, so nothing is bonded on top to lift off the grade later.
Every benched lot in Grand Terrace has a step at the property line, and old dry walls with no drain behind them bulge after a wet winter. We build footed and reinforced, with weep holes and gravel behind the stem, with engineering once the retained height passes four feet.
Additions and garage conversions are common on lots too narrow to build outward, and a floor poured inside one has to meet the existing slab at a level already set. We pour over compacted base and a vapor barrier, dowel into what is there, and saw the joints to the room.
The city runs one counter for all of this, at Grand Terrace City Hall on Barton Road, and after incorporation in 1978 it stayed small enough that you deal with the same people from application to final inspection. Retaining walls over four feet, structural slabs and anything that changes the fall on your lot go through plan check there; a like-for-like patio usually does not. We file, meet the inspector and close it out.
Water is not the city, which catches people out on a trenching job: Grand Terrace is served by the Riverside Highland Water Company, a mutual older than the city itself, so a main or a service under your frontage is located with them and not through a municipal utility. Sewer runs to Colton. We mark both before a saw goes into the ground, because a service line on a hillside lot is usually shallower on the fill side than the plan suggests.
Access is the other thing this town asks of a crew. Streets off Mount Vernon Avenue climb hard and the driveways off them are steep and short, so a mixer often cannot back to the pour and the load goes in by pump or by barrow down a set of steps. That has to be priced honestly rather than found on the day, which is one reason every estimate is measured and written on site rather than worked out from an aerial photograph.
Four stages. On a benched lot the middle two carry the work, what holds the ground has to be settled before anything flat goes on top of it, so they are described here as they actually happen.
Say which street and what the concrete does now, holds a car, holds a bank, holds water. We reply within 1 business day.
We shoot the fall across the pour, dig at the cut and fill line to see what is under it, and write the figure down on the spot.
Walls over four feet and structural slabs go to city plan check. We file, and tell you the date it lands rather than a guess.
Retaining goes in first and drains behind it, then base and steel, then the slab. We walk it with you once the inspector signs.
Send the address and a photograph taken from the low end looking up. We will come out, take levels, and put a written figure in your hand with the base depth and any wall on it.
Reviews
These are from work across the 20 towns we cover rather than from this city alone. Grand Terrace has about 12,595 residents, and five reviews from inside it would be a smaller sample than an honest one.
“Our 1920s place in the Wood Streets had a driveway that was more crack than concrete. They took out 480 square feet, dug the old fill out to firm ground and poured 5 inches. Marco was there for the pour and the joints were cut the same afternoon.”
“The city tagged the sidewalk panel outside our house on Magnolia. Riverside Concrete Pro pulled the encroachment permit, met the inspector and poured the 5-foot section to the cross slope the city wanted. I never had to go to the counter myself.”
“We wanted a patio behind the house in Canyon Crest that would take the afternoon sun. They poured 380 square feet in a broom finish, cut the joints on a 10-foot grid and sealed it at 28 days. Two summers on it has not moved a millimeter.”
Six questions that come up on this side of the county line, answered from what is true of a benched hillside lot rather than of the Inland Empire in general.
On a sloping lot the biggest single item is rarely the slab. It is what has to be built to hold the ground beside it, how much material comes off the cut or goes onto the fill to get a workable pad, and whether the mix can reach the pour by chute or has to be pumped up a steep drive. The finish matters least. All of them are read off levels taken at the property, which is why no figure comes before the visit.
For a replacement patio or driveway on your own lot, generally not. For a retaining wall over four feet, a structural slab, or work that changes where water leaves the property, yes, that is plan check at City Hall on Barton Road. Because the city is small, the wait is usually the plan checker rather than a queue, and the same inspector tends to see the job through. We pull it and book the inspections.
Quickly. The yard on Chicago Avenue is 8.0 miles away and the run up the 215 takes about fifteen minutes outside peak, so this is a daily-range town rather than one we batch trips to. We call back within 1 business day and can normally take levels inside the same week. After the pour it means a crew can be back the next morning to check how the slab set.
The hill itself is old and firm, Blue Mountain is rock, and the cut side of a bench is stable ground. What moves is the fill that was pushed out over the downhill half of the lot to make it level, and the loose material behind an old wall that was built without drainage. You can look up the mapped soil for your parcel on the USDA Web Soil Survey, but we still dig on site.
Almost always, and the limit is usually the transitions rather than the slope. A car grounds where a steep run meets a flat apron too abruptly, so we break the grade over a longer length and pour a landing at the garage. Steep pours are placed with a stiffer mix worked uphill so it does not run, and the surface is textured for grip, because a smooth slab on a grade is slick the first wet morning.
Grand Terrace is one of 20 towns inside our 25-mile radius, and it sits at the middle of a tight group: Colton over the north line, Loma Linda east across the freeway, and the whole of Riverside once you cross back over the county line. The CSLB C-8 license and the base detail are the same in each. The nearest of them, with distances, are listed further down this page.
Grand Terrace is hemmed in on three sides, so its neighbors are close, most of the list below is under fifteen minutes from it. Same crew, same base specification, same written estimate at each address.
Open the Riverside Office in Google Maps Call and describe the slope, or send the address and we will come and take the levels ourselves. You will get a written figure that says what holds the ground as well as what goes over it.