Saddleback Mission Viejo Concrete pours the long drives, pool decks and walls of Villa Park's half acre lots, 25 miles up the 5 and the 55 from our office, each drawn from the ground it finds.
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Villa Park was never a tract. Its houses went up one at a time on half acre lots from the 1960s on, so there is no grading plan and no builder's slab, and every job is drawn from what the lot is.
That changes how a job starts. On a Mission Viejo tract we read the grading plan and know where the fill sits before we dig. In Villa Park nobody has one, because the lot was leveled by whoever built the house, and the concrete went in over it piece by piece as the family grew. A drive here can run 150 feet across ground that was a citrus row, a septic field and a fill pad in turn, and a patio can meet a pool, a wall and a slope at once. So the first visit is spent probing.
The specification follows the probe. Where the ground is the sand and gravel Santiago Creek left, 4 inches of base and a 4 inch slab hold for good. Where the probe finds soft fill or a root mat under an old tree, the fill comes out, the base goes deeper and the joints are set around the trees rather than on a grid. A drive of that length is poured in sections with a tooled joint every 10 feet and an expansion joint at 40, and the run is drawn on the estimate with its falls.
Villa Park has no tracts, so no two houses share a plan and no two lots share a slab. The eight jobs below are written for a custom house on half an acre, where the drive is long, the yard holds a pool and the ground is what the builder left.
A Villa Park driveway can run 150 feet from the road to a garage at the back of a half acre, and the original was poured in sections over 30 years as the house grew. We replace it as one drawn run, 5 inches thick, jointed every 10 feet, with a fall the whole length to the road.
A patio here is sized to the yard, which is the width of three tract lots, and it usually meets a pool, a lawn and a planter at once. We pour it in one piece with an expansion joint at the pool coping, tool the falls away from the house and the pool, and finish it for bare feet.
There is no tract standard in Villa Park to match, so a stamped drive is drawn to the house, flagstone for a ranch house, ashlar for a Spanish one. We cast it into a 4 inch slab with integral color, seal it in 2 coats, and pour a sample so the color is chosen on concrete.
Villa Park chose to have no public sidewalks, so the walks here are private, from the road to the door and around the house to the pool. We pour them 4 inches thick and at least 4 feet wide, jointed every 5 feet, and route them around the roots of the trees planted in the 1960s.
Villa Park garages hold three cars and often a workshop, and the floor under them is a 1960s slab that has heaved where a root or a leak got under it. We cut out the broken bays, compact the base, pour 5 inches over a vapor barrier, and leave the sound bays exactly as they are.
A custom house asks for concrete that matches it, and a Villa Park owner is choosing for the next 30 years, not for a sale. We pour exposed aggregate, salt finish and integral color, and make a 2 foot sample of each on the lot, because a color on a chart is not a color in sun.
Villa Park rises toward the hills on its north side, and the lots there were cut into the slope by whoever built the house and held by whatever wall they chose. We replace a leaning one with a concrete wall footed 18 inches into firm ground, drained behind, permitted over 4 feet.
The outbuilding is the Villa Park job, a workshop, a pool house or a casita on a lot with room for one, and its floor is a slab under a roof, which the City checks. We pour it on compacted base over a vapor barrier, level to the finish you chose, with the plumbing sleeved first.
Villa Park is about 25 miles from our office, the 5 to the 55 and off at Katella Avenue, which becomes Villa Park Road at the city line, and a crew that leaves before 7 is on the lot in about 40 minutes. The city incorporated in 1962 to keep its half acre lots, and it has no sidewalks and almost no commerce by choice. Permits come from the City of Villa Park at City Hall on Santiago Boulevard. Flatwork at grade needs none. A wall over 4 feet or a slab under a room does.
Most of the city has no association, which is the other thing that sets it apart from where we are based. There is no architectural committee to submit to and no tract standard to match, so the finish, the color and the width are yours to choose and the only review is the City's. What the city did fix is the street edge. Many Villa Park streets have no curb, so the drive meets the asphalt directly, and the apron has to be drawn to take the road's water as well as the drive's.
The lots tell you what the household does. There is a pool on most of them, a boat or a trailer on many, and a horse on some of the larger lots, so what we pour is a deck around a pool shell with an expansion joint at the coping, a 6 inch pad where the trailer stands, and a wash rack with a fall to a drain. We have poured all three on one Villa Park lot in one week, which never happens on a tract, and an estimate like that is itemized surface by surface.
Four stages, planned as whole days because the lot is big and the drive from our office is not short. The probe and the measure come first, and the written figure follows on the same visit, so the schedule is set before anything is cut.
Trevor Lindqvist walks the lot with a probe first, finds the soft ground and the roots, then measures each surface and writes the estimate.
A wall, a footing or a building floor goes to the City of Villa Park for plan check, and we file it. A drive or a patio at grade needs none.
The old sections come out over a day or two, soft fill is replaced, and 4 inches of base is compacted to the forms along the whole run.
A long drive is poured in sections with the fall checked at each, the joints are cut the same day, and cars stay off it for 7 days.
Phone us or send the form, and you hear back within 1 business day with a date for the visit. Every estimate is measured and written on site, surface by surface, so a lot doing a drive, a deck and a wall can build them in the order that suits.
Reviews
Reviews our customers left on Google, Facebook and the BBB, from the towns we cover, Villa Park among them. Each one is about a single job on a single lot and how it has held up.
“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 owners in Villa Park ask before a job, covering what moves the estimate on a big lot, which permits the City wants, how far we come, what is under the ground, how long the work takes and the towns nearby.
Length and what is under it. A drive here is measured in the hundreds of feet, so the slab itself is the largest line, and beneath it the lot was leveled by whoever built the house, so the base is drawn after the probe rather than before it. A pool deck adds the coping joint and a wall adds the footing and the drain. Every line is measured on the lot at the free visit and written there.
Not for a drive, a walk or a patio at grade on your own lot. You do for a wall over 4 feet from the bottom of its footing, a footing under a patio cover and the floor of any building you can stand inside, and those go to the City of Villa Park at City Hall on Santiago Boulevard. We file the application, meet the inspector at the footing and again at the slab, and close the permit out when the work is done.
About 25 miles, the 5 to the 55 and out Katella Avenue, which turns into Villa Park Road at the city line. That makes Villa Park a whole-day town for us. The truck is loaded for the lot, the crew arrives before the school run and stays until the day's pour is finished and cut, and a drive of the size found here is usually 3 or 4 of those days in one week.
Mostly the sand and gravel Santiago Creek dropped as it left the canyon, which drains well and carries a slab. What is on top of it is the problem, because each lot was leveled by its own builder, and a probe finds old fill, a former citrus row or the root mat of a 60 year old tree where a plan would say clean ground. We dig out what is soft and compact 4 inches of base over what is not.
A full drive runs 4 days on site, a patio or a pool deck 2 or 3, and a wall about 3 with the inspection in between. Then the concrete needs 24 hours before it is walked on, 7 days before a car and 28 to reach full strength. On a lot doing two or three surfaces we pour them in the order that keeps a path to the door open, and the estimate says which day is which.
Villa Park is surrounded by Orange, which is not on our list, so the nearest towns we cover are Tustin down the 55, Placentia and Yorba Linda to the north, and Newport Beach at the coast. Our office is in Mission Viejo and covers south Orange County from Laguna Beach to San Clemente, so a second property anywhere in that range gets the same crew.
Villa Park is an island inside Orange, and the towns on our list nearest it are Tustin down the 55, Placentia and Yorba Linda across the river to the north, and Newport Beach at the end of the 55. The rest of our coverage runs south from Mission Viejo.
Open the Mission Viejo Office in Google Maps Send the form or call, and you hear back within 1 business day with a date. The estimate is free, probed and written on the lot, and the work carries a written guarantee on the build.