Saddleback Mission Viejo Concrete pours patios, drives and walls on the terraced pads of Aliso Viejo, 7 miles west of our yard on La Paz Road, and writes the estimate at your door for nothing.
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Aliso Viejo is terraced. The Mission Viejo Company cut the west side of the San Joaquin Hills into stepped pads through the 1980s and 1990s, and a yard here ends at a slope bank, not at a fence line.
The bank between one terrace and the next is fill, placed when the pad was made and held by an association slope that nobody may cut into. A patio poured out to the top of that bank sits on the loosest ground on the lot, and its outer edge drops as the fill takes on twenty winters of irrigation from the slope planting below. The house is on the cut side and stays put, so the crack opens along the line where the pad changes from one to the other, and it opens wider each spring.
So the pad is probed before it is priced, and where the fill side gives under the bar the base goes in deeper there and is compacted in lifts. The slab is poured 4 inches on 4 inches of gravel, jointed on a grid that puts one joint on the cut and fill line, and pitched back toward a drain rather than out over the bank, because water sent down an association slope becomes the association's complaint. Where a wall holds the edge, its footing goes into the cut and a pipe runs behind it.
Aliso Viejo went up in one push from the middle of the 1980s to the end of the 1990s, so its first patios, walks and pool decks are wearing out together. The work here is replacement on a small terraced lot, under two sets of association rules.
A driveway in Aliso Viejo is short and pitched, because the pads are terraced and the garage sits below or above the street. We pour 4 inches on compacted gravel, 5 at the low end, cut the joints across the fall, and file the association's sign-off before the apron comes out.
The patio behind an Aliso Viejo house is the builder's 1990s slab, poured to the top of the fill and dropping at its outer edge. We break it out, dig the fill side deeper, pour 4 inches on gravel and pitch it back to a drain instead of out over the association slope.
Stamped concrete in Aliso Viejo goes on the patio that has become the whole yard, where a plain slab would read as a parking pad. We cast an ashlar into 4 inches, color it through the mix to sit with the tract's stone, and seal it at 28 days once the slab has cured.
Walks in Aliso Viejo run from drive to door on a slope, and it is the steps that go first, heaving on fill nobody compacted. We take out the heaved panels, compact the ground, pour 4 inches jointed at each change of grade, and dowel the new panels into the ones that stay.
A 1990s garage floor in Aliso Viejo is usually sound and low at the door, where the pitched drive sends rain in under it. We break out the front run, pour it with a fall to the door and a swale across the threshold, and trowel it flat enough to take a coating a month later.
Exposed aggregate suits an Aliso Viejo pool deck, because the stone gives wet feet a grip and a light matrix reads cooler in August than a colored slab. We seed the stone into the pour, wash it out the same afternoon and seal it once cured, with an expansion joint at the coping.
A retaining wall in Aliso Viejo holds the edge of a terrace where the yard meets an association slope, and it is what most of our calls here are about. We dig the footing into the cut side, set rock and a pipe behind the stem, pour it in a day and permit anything over 4 feet.
Interior slabs in Aliso Viejo are the garage turned into a room and the small addition a terraced lot has space for. We pour over a vapor barrier on gravel, dowel the new footing to the old where the inspector can see it, and trowel the floor flat enough for tile or plank.
Our yard on La Paz Road is 7 miles east along Alicia Parkway, so a crew is in Aliso Viejo inside 20 minutes. The city incorporated in 2001, after most of its houses were standing, and plans go to the City of Aliso Viejo building counter at City Hall on Journey. Nearly every lot also sits under the Aliso Viejo Community Association and, often, a smaller association for its own tract, and a change seen from the street goes to both. We write that submittal with the estimate.
The tracts either side of Aliso Creek Road and Aliso Viejo Parkway are the city's middle age, detached houses of the late 1980s and 1990s on lots where a barrow fits down the side yard and a mixer does not. Laguna Audubon on the east looks over Aliso Creek, and Glenwood went in last, around the golf course, in the 2000s. The townhome clusters off Pacific Park Drive have a patio the width of the unit and a gate onto a shared drive, and that gate is where the concrete comes in.
The ground is the same clay-bearing siltstone as Mission Viejo, cut and filled into steps, and the water off the pads runs east to Aliso Creek or west into Wood Canyon, so a yard drains one way or the other and rarely to the street. The 73 toll road cuts the city in two and puts a pump truck on either side inside 5 minutes. The marine layer reaches this far in May and June, which keeps a morning pour cool and gives the finish an hour more than Mission Viejo gets.
Four stages on one crew, with the two association reviews started the day the estimate is signed, because on a terraced lot the reviews take longer than the pour. Nothing is priced until the pad has been probed.
Trevor Lindqvist measures the slab, probes the pad along the cut and fill line, checks where the bank drains and writes the figure on site.
We send one drawing to the Aliso Viejo Community Association and to your tract's own committee, and file with the city if a wall is in it.
The old slab is broken out and barrowed through the side gate, soft fill is dug and replaced, and 4 inches of gravel is compacted in lifts.
The pour is one morning, the joints are cut that afternoon with one on the fill line, and the slab is kept wet for 7 days, cars off for 7 too.
Call or send the form and you hear back within 1 business day. The visit is free, the estimate is itemized and handed over before we leave, and we are in Aliso Viejo most weeks, on one terrace or another.
Reviews
Reviews left on Google, Facebook and the BBB by homeowners across the towns we work from Mission Viejo. Aliso Viejo is one of them, and the pads behind these reviews are the ones described above.
“Our driveway in Aegean Hills had dropped two inches on the fill side of the pad. They probed it, found the soft half, dug it deeper and packed the base in lifts. They poured 720 square feet at 5 inches, cut the joints across the slope that afternoon, and two winters on nothing has moved.”
“The wall holding our back slope in Laguna Niguel leaned a little more every winter. They took it down, dug the footing 18 inches into hard ground, set drain rock and a pipe behind the new wall and poured it in a day. The first storm since ran clear out of the drain, not over the top.”
“Our pool deck in Lake Forest was the original 1990s one and had lifted at the coping. They cut it out, set an expansion joint around the pool, poured 480 square feet with a salt finish and had it walkable in two days. Bare feet in August and it stays cool enough to stand on.”
What we are asked on an Aliso Viejo step before a job is booked, on what moves the estimate on a terraced lot, who has to approve it, how far we come and what the slope bank behind the yard means for a slab.
The bank at the back of the lot, before the size of the slab. A patio that runs to the top of an association slope needs the fill side of the pad dug deeper and the slab pitched back to a drain, and a wall along that edge is a second job with a footing and a pipe. After that it is the tear-out of the old slab. Every estimate is measured and written on site, with the pad probed before a number goes on paper.
The Aliso Viejo Community Association for anything seen from a street or a common area, your own tract's committee where there is one, and the city for a wall over 4 feet or a slab under a roof. A flat patio inside your fence needs no permit, because the California Residential Code exempts it, but it may still need the association's signature. We write all of the submittals and file them with the estimate.
About 7 miles, out Alicia Parkway, and under 20 minutes at 6 in the morning. The crew is on your street before the school run and the mixer is ordered for 8, so a pour is finished and the joints are cut before the afternoon breeze up the canyon starts drying the surface. A second day in Aliso Viejo is booked back to back with the first, not a week later.
Not to the top of the bank. The slope behind most Aliso Viejo yards is association property, and the top of it is where the fill is loosest, so a slab carried to the edge is a slab that drops there. We stop the pour short of the bank, pitch it back toward the house to a drain, and where the yard needs a level edge we pour a low wall on a footing dug into firm ground, with a pipe behind it.
Three days on site for most, because everything comes in and goes out through a side gate. The old slab is broken and barrowed out on the first day, the fill is dug and the base compacted on the second, and the pour is the third morning with the joints cut that afternoon. Walk on it the next day and keep furniture off it for a week. The association review is the only thing that adds to that, so we file it first.
Laguna Niguel, Laguna Hills and Laguna Beach, which border it, and Laguna Woods and Lake Forest beyond them, all from the same yard on La Paz Road. Wood Canyon is parkland, so there is no lot on the west side to be on the wrong side of. If your street sits on the Laguna Niguel line along Aliso Creek, call and we will say which page is yours before anyone drives out.
Aliso Viejo meets Laguna Hills to the north, Laguna Niguel across Aliso Creek and Laguna Beach through the wilderness park, and we cover all three from La Paz Road. If your street runs along one of those lines, the page next door may be yours.
Open the Mission Viejo Office in Google Maps Send the form and we call back within 1 business day to book the visit. The estimate is free and written on site, and every job carries a written workmanship guarantee.