Concrete driveway building in La Verne CA - a driveway that sends water to the street

Most of the calls I get come from homeowners in La Verne and the cities around it whose driveway has cracked, settled or started sending water toward the garage, and who still need to get in and out every day. The price comes down mostly to the size of the driveway, how much old concrete has to come out, how deep we need to go for a solid base, how thick the slab is and how plain or decorative the finish is. The schedule depends on the city's permit steps, the weather on pour day and the curing time before you can drive on it. When I come out, I'll measure and leave you a written estimate with the figure for your own driveway.

A driveway has to send water out toward the street and away from your garage, so we set the grades before we talk about finish. We break out and haul away the old concrete, dig past the loose dirt and pack the subgrade, the soil the slab rests on, because a base that's only raked level settles and takes the slab down with it. Then we set the forms to the grade, place rebar, the steel that holds the slab together if it cracks, and pour and finish the concrete. We cut control joints, shallow grooves that give the slab a planned place to crack, while the concrete is still fresh, and most driveways get a broom finish, a light texture that gives tires and shoes grip when it's wet. If the budget has to come down somewhere, I'd rather you save on the finish than on the base, because a finish can be changed later and the base can't be reached without tearing the driveway out.

A new driveway is often a good time to look at the rest of the concrete around the house. If the back yard has an old slab or bare dirt, we can plan a concrete patio at the same visit, and if you'd like the driveway to look like stone or brick, stamped concrete presses a pattern and color into the fresh surface over the same base.

Whether a driveway job here needs a permit is the city's call. In La Verne, Building and Safety issues permits for construction work, and Public Works issues encroachment permits for work in the public right of way, which on a driveway usually means the part that meets the street. That encroachment permit covers only the right of way, so any other permits other agencies require still have to be in place, and it bars washing leftover material from exposed aggregate or similar finishes into the street or a storm drain. We check with the city on each job, and where a permit is needed we handle the application and set up the inspections, and when we work near the street we keep washout out of the gutter.

Many of the driveways we replace run from the street up to the garage of an older house, and the ones that hold water usually had their grade or their base skimped when they were first poured. Expansive soil, ground that swells when wet and shrinks as it dries, is common across many western states, and on it guidance calls for a crushed rock base whose depth depends on how much the soil moves. I won't guess at what's under your driveway, so if the soil isn't clear, I'll tell you it's a question for a soils engineer. We see the same kinds of driveways on jobs in San Dimas and Claremont.