Concrete Sidewalk Building in Upland CA - a walk that stays level and safe when wet

Most calls start with an old walk that's heaved, cracked or holding water, or a yard with no real path to the door at all. The price mostly turns on how long and wide the walk is, how much old concrete and dirt has to come out, whether roots are in the way and whether a car crosses it anywhere, like where it meets your driveway. The schedule turns on whether the walk needs a city permit, on the weather and on the days it needs to harden before you walk on it, and your written estimate lays out the steps and what's included so you're not guessing at either. We're based in Upland and work in Ontario, Rancho Cucamonga, Claremont and the other cities around it.

Before anything gets dug, I look at the trees near the walk and any spot where a car will cross, because those two things decide the route and how the base gets built. Then our crew digs out the topsoil and roots and packs the subgrade, the dirt the slab sits on, so the walk is held up evenly instead of settling with loose fill. Where a car crosses, we usually make that section thicker or add rebar, steel bars inside the slab that hold it together if it does crack, so it isn't the first spot to break. We pour, give the top a broom finish, fine ridges dragged across it so shoes grip when it's wet, and cut control joints, shallow grooves that give the concrete a planned place to crack, early enough to do their job. After that the walk cures, which means it stays off-limits while it gains strength. If the budget gets tight, I'd rather you save on the finish than on the base, because nobody sees the base after day one and it's the part that decides whether the walk stays flat.

If the walk ends at a garage whose floor is cracked or sinking, we can look at a new garage floor on the same visit so the two meet cleanly. For a front walk you'd like to dress up, decorative concrete adds color or a pattern, and we'll talk through which finishes still give good footing.

If your walk runs into the city right of way, the strip along the street, or changes how water drains off your lot, it needs an encroachment permit from Upland Public Works, and the city lists sidewalk paving among that work. Whether a walk inside your yard needs one isn't always clear from the outside, so I'll tell you at the estimate and handle the application with the city if it does. Only a state-licensed contractor holding the license class for the work can apply for that permit, and the city also requires a general liability policy of at least $1,000,000 that names the City of Upland as an additional insured before anyone works in its right of way.

On jobs here we see a lot of older walks lifted by street and yard trees, and plenty that cross a driveway or catch sprinkler water, so we settle the route, the base and the finish before we order concrete. We see the same thing in Ontario and Rancho Cucamonga, and we plan those walks the same way.