Katella Anaheim Concrete widens drives, replaces walks and pours patios in Westminster, 10 miles from our Anaheim yard down Brookhurst Street. Written on your lot, property line found first.
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In Westminster the drive that came with the house is the thing most often replaced, because it is too narrow for the cars now on it and has cracked where a third car has stood on the lawn beside it.
A 1960s Westminster drive is 16 to 18 feet wide, 3 and a half inches thick, and poured on the graded farmland with no base under it. The house behind it sits on a slab of its own, so the drive butts a garage floor that has not moved while the drive has. Widening it means the new width and the old slab must act as one, so we take the old drive out rather than add a strip beside it, and pour the whole width 4 inches on compacted base, jointed for the new shape.
What goes in the ground first is the property line. Westminster's lots are 5,000 to 7,000 square feet on a flat grid, and the public walk, the parkway strip and the driveway approach at the curb are city ground, so a wider drive needs a wider cut through the curb and that goes through Public Works. Inside the line we check the city's limit on how much of a front yard may be paved before a form is set, because a drive poured past what the code allows is one the city can make you remove.
Westminster was built in one push between 1955 and 1970, single story houses on slab foundations with a 2 car drive and a lawn. Sixty years on there are more cars than the drive was drawn for, and the original concrete has done its time.
A Westminster drive is widened by replacing it, because a strip poured beside a 1960s slab opens at the join within 3 winters. The whole width goes in at 4 inches on compacted base, jointed for the new shape, and the wider approach through the curb is permitted with it.
A Westminster back yard is small and walled on 3 sides, so a patio here is most of the yard and has to drain itself. We pour 4 inches on base with a fall to a channel drain along the low edge, pipe it under the side yard to the street, and stop the slab short of the block wall.
Stamped concrete in Westminster is the front path and the porch, the two surfaces a visitor sees, done in a flag or ashlar pattern with a color close to the house. We pour 4 inches on base, stamp it the day of the pour, and seal it in 2 coats against the sun.
The public walk in front of a Westminster house is city ground, and a lifted panel there is replaced under a Public Works permit to the city's own section. Your own path from the drive to the door is poured 4 inches thick, broomed, and jointed to match the walk it meets.
Most Westminster garages were poured with the house slab, so the floor is the foundation and is not broken out. What it gets is a level survey, the cracks routed and filled, and a 2 inch bonded topping where the old surface has spalled too far to take a coating.
Decorative work on a Westminster lot is a broomed field with a smooth border, or an exposed aggregate path, finishes that suit a 1960s house without pretending it is something else. Color is sampled on the lot in the sun before we order, and the sealer is matt, not gloss.
Westminster is flat, so a retaining wall here is a planter wall or the seat wall round a patio rather than a slope, built 2 feet high on a footing 12 inches into firm ground with a drain behind it. A wall on the property line is drawn with the neighbor's side in mind.
An interior slab in Westminster is a garage conversion or an ADU at the back of a 5,000 square foot lot, and the state's ADU law lets one onto nearly all of them. We pour 4 inches over a 10 mil barrier on compacted base, trowel it for tile, and hide the joints under the walls.
Brookhurst Street runs south from our yard in Anaheim through Garden Grove into Westminster, and Euclid Street does the same a mile east, so a crew is at a Westminster curb in about 25 minutes with no freeway. The city incorporated in 1957, mid-boom, and the Building Division at City Hall on Westminster Boulevard checks plans for a wall, a footing or a cover. The approach through the curb belongs to Public Works and takes its own permit, filed with the drive.
Midway City is the exception in the middle of the map. It is county ground with the city on nearly every side, and a lot there is permitted by Orange County, not by Westminster, with the county's own inspector at the pour. We read the parcel before the permit. Little Saigon along Bolsa Avenue is the commercial heart of the city, and the residential blocks behind it are the densest in the towns we cover, with side yards a barrow fits and a mixer does not.
The ground is the flat of the coastal plain, silt and fine sand a few dozen feet above the sea, and it holds a slab well but gives it nowhere to drain. Surface water on a Westminster lot goes to the street or nowhere, so every slab we pour is graded to the curb at a quarter inch a foot, and a back patio hemmed in by block walls gets a drain to a pipe under the side yard. A 1960s block wall on the line has little footing, so a patio stops short of it.
Four stages, starting with the line. On a Westminster lot the property line, the parkway and the paving limit decide how wide the drive can go, so those are found before the old slab is touched or a figure is written.
Omar Espinoza finds the property pins and the parkway, lays the new width out to the code, measures it and writes the figure on the lot.
The old slab comes out whole with the strip of lawn beside it, the ground is cut to depth, and 4 inches of base is placed and compacted.
The approach through the curb takes a Public Works permit, filed with the drive. Nothing else at grade needs one. A wall or a cover does.
The full width is poured in a morning and sawn by evening. Walk on it at 24 hours, park on it at 7 days, and the lawn edge is reset.
Call or send the form and Omar Espinoza calls back within 1 business day with a time. Every estimate is measured and written on site, the property line is found on the same visit, and Brookhurst Street brings us to your curb in 25 minutes.
Reviews
Our own reviews, left on Google and Facebook by homeowners across north Orange County. Westminster is the west end of that run, and the widened drives above are the work they describe.
“Our drive was the one the house came with, and the sand under it had washed away at the gutter end. They dug ten inches deeper, brought angular rock in and packed it in lifts, then put down 560 square feet at a five inch depth. It has been through two winters now without a mark.”
“Half our garage stands on cut and half on fill, which nobody had ever mentioned to us. Omar probed until he found the line, dug the fill side deeper, and set a joint straight along it. The floor went in at 440 square feet, five inches thick, and it is still one flat plane.”
“A ficus root had pushed our frontage walk up into a step the postman kept catching. The crew cut the root, stood a barrier against it, laid fresh base and poured 84 feet at four inches, and they sorted the paperwork with the city themselves. Flat all year since.”
What Westminster owners ask before a drive is widened or a patio poured, on what moves the figure, on the curb and the county, on the front yard limit, on drainage on flat ground and on the wait.
The approach, then the demolition. A wider drive needs a wider cut through the curb, and that is city ground with its own permit and its own inspection. Then the old slab comes out whole, because a strip added beside it fails at the join. After that it is square feet, and the tape decides it on the lot. Nothing on our sheet is a rate off a chart.
Both, depending on the parcel. Inside the city a wall, a footing or a cover goes to the Building Division at City Hall on Westminster Boulevard, and the curb cut goes to Public Works. Midway City, in the middle of the map, is unincorporated, and a lot there is permitted and inspected by Orange County. We read the parcel before the permit, because the streets do not tell you which side of the line you are on.
Less than all of it. Westminster, like most cities on the plain, limits the share of a front yard that can be paved, and a drive poured past that limit is one the city can make you remove. We lay the new width out to what the code allows before a form is set, and where a household needs more parking than the front allows, a side yard pad behind the fence line is the usual answer.
To the street, or nowhere. The lot is flat and the ground is silt, so water that lands on a slab has to be carried off by the slab's own fall. We grade every pour to the curb at a quarter inch a foot, and a back patio boxed in by block walls gets a channel drain along its low edge and a pipe under the side yard to the gutter. A slab poured level on this ground is a shallow pond every January.
Seven days after the pour. The old slab is out and the base in on the first day, the pour is the second, and the slab needs 24 hours before feet and 7 days before a car. Park on the street for that week, because a car on a 2 day old slab leaves a mark that stays. The joints are sawn the afternoon of the pour so the shrinkage cracks run straight.
Yes. Stanton is on the way down Beach Boulevard, and Fountain Valley, Cypress and Los Alamitos are all reached from the same yard in Anaheim on the same run. A lot on a city line gets the same crew and a different permit counter, and the page for the town next door says which. Garden Grove, which the crew drives through, is not a town we cover.
Westminster shares a border with Fountain Valley to the south and Stanton to the north, and Cypress and Los Alamitos sit to the west on the same flat ground. We cover all four from the same yard. If your street is on a line, read the page next door.
Open the Anaheim Office in Google Maps Send the form, hear from us within 1 business day, and get the figure written on your lot. The finished work carries a written workmanship guarantee against defects in how it was built.