Hawthorne Torrance Concrete pours drives, aprons and slabs in Lawndale, 4 miles up Hawthorne Boulevard from our office. Every estimate is measured and written on site, and it costs you nothing.
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A Lawndale lot is a strip. Many run 40 or 50 feet wide and 150 feet deep, with a house at the front, another at the back and one driveway serving both, so the drive is the largest slab on the lot.
A long, narrow slab fails differently from a square one. Its whole length is the same 9 feet wide, every car tracks the same two wheel lines down it, and it was poured in the 1950s as one strip without a joint, so the first crack runs across it where the front house's car turns and the next appears 20 feet on. Water is the second problem. A 150 foot drive on flat ground has to fall somewhere, and one laid dead level holds a puddle at the low spot all winter until the base softens.
So a Lawndale drive is designed before it is poured. It falls an inch in 10 feet along its length toward the street or a drain at the back so no water stands on it, and it is poured 5 inches thick on compacted rock with number 4 steel, jointed every 10 feet across its width so a 150 foot strip becomes 15 panels that each move on their own. Where the lot line runs down the middle of a shared drive a joint is set on the line, so two owners can each replace their half if they ever have to.
Lawndale was subdivided as narrow farm lots, long from the street to the back fence, and the town was built on them without redrawing the lines. So the concrete here is the long drive, the second house behind the first, and the apron.
A Lawndale driveway can run 150 feet from the apron to the back house, and it is built as 15 panels rather than one strip. We pour 5 inches on compacted rock with number 4 steel, saw a joint every 10 feet and one on the lot line where it is shared, and give it a fall.
A patio in Lawndale is squeezed between the front house and the back one, so it is poured to drain sideways toward the drive rather than toward either door. We pour 4 inches with a broom finish, jointed to the width of the strip, and dowel it to the drive so the two stay level.
Stamped concrete in Lawndale is asked for at the front, on the short section between the apron and the front house that the street sees. The pattern goes into a 4 inch slab, ashlar or brick, colored through and sealed twice, and it takes the same cars as the plain drive behind.
The public walk on Hawthorne Boulevard or Inglewood Avenue is the City's, and replacing a lifted panel there means an encroachment permit and a morning with the walk coned off. We file it, pour the panel at 4 inches level with its neighbors, and have the walk open by afternoon.
A Lawndale garage sits at the far end of the drive, and its slab was poured in the 1950s at 3 inches on sand. We break it out, put rock and a vapor barrier under it and pour 5 inches troweled flat, so a car, a workbench or an ADU conversion has a floor that stays level and dry.
Exposed aggregate suits the front section of a Lawndale drive because it hides the two wheel lines a plain broom finish shows within a year. A pea gravel is seeded into the surface, the paste washed off the same afternoon, and the slab sealed once cured to keep the stone fast.
A retaining wall in Lawndale is short, holding the back house's yard a step above the drive or a neighbor's lot a foot above yours. We foot it 18 inches into firm sand, drain behind it with gravel to a weep, and finish the top level so a fence can sit on it without a gap.
An ADU at the back of a Lawndale lot is the second house built again, and its interior slab has to be reached down the same long drive. We pump the concrete from the street, pour 4 inches on a vapor barrier over rock, thicken the edges under the walls and trowel it for flooring.
Hawthorne Boulevard runs straight through the middle of Lawndale, and our office is on it in Torrance, 4 miles south, so a crew is here in about 10 minutes and passes the job on its way to most others. Permits are issued by the City of Lawndale Community Development Department at City Hall on Burin Avenue, a building permit for a wall or an ADU slab and an encroachment permit for the apron and the walk, which on Hawthorne Boulevard or Inglewood Avenue is busy ground to close.
The city ends at Prairie Avenue on the east, and the streets beyond it around El Camino College and Alondra Park are unincorporated, permitted by Los Angeles County even where the mail says Lawndale, so the parcel is checked before anything is filed. The 405 cuts across the north of town, and the blocks beside it between Inglewood Avenue and Hawthorne Boulevard were rebuilt when the freeway came through, so the slabs there are younger than those south of Manhattan Beach Boulevard.
Lawndale is the most tightly packed town we cover, with more people to the square mile than Torrance, Gardena or Hawthorne, and most of them renting. That shapes the work in a way the ground does not. A driveway here is parked on every night, so the pour is planned around where 4 or 5 cars go for a week, and the apron on a main road is cut and poured between the morning and evening traffic so the street is never closed long. The sand under the city drains and is not the fault.
Four stages, sized for a strip of concrete 150 feet long with two households on it. The written estimate settles the fall, the joints and where the cars go before the first stage starts.
Kenji Okamoto measures the full length, shoots the fall, checks who uses the drive and prices it section by section, in writing, on the spot.
The apron's encroachment permit goes to City Hall on Burin Avenue, and the pour is split into sections so both houses keep parking.
The old strip comes out a section at a time, the rock base is compacted with the fall built in, and number 4 steel goes on chairs.
Each section is one morning to pour and finish, joints sawn that afternoon and kept wet for 7 days. The apron is poured last, at dawn.
Call or use the form and a day is set within 1 business day. Kenji Okamoto walks the full length of the drive, shoots the levels to see where it falls, and writes the figure at the property before he goes.
Reviews
Written on Google, Facebook and the BBB by customers across the South Bay, Lawndale among them. Every review names a different job, and the drives are the ones described here.
“The garage slab in our 1955 house had heaved and the door would not close. They broke it out in a morning, found no base under it, compacted 4 inches of rock, poured 440 square feet at 5 inches and troweled it smooth. The estimate was written in our driveway and the invoice matched it.”
“We built an ADU and Hawthorne Torrance Concrete did the slab. They set the forms to the plans, the City inspector passed the steel first time, and the pour went in before eight in the morning. 620 square feet, edges thickened to 12 inches, and the framers were on it a week later.”
“Our slope in the Riviera crept onto the patio every winter. They dug footings 30 inches into the clay, poured a 42-foot wall with weep holes and a drain behind it, and backfilled with gravel. Kenji Okamoto came back after the first rains to check it. Dry, straight, and it has not moved.”
The questions that come up on a Lawndale visit, on cost, permits from City Hall, sharing a drive with the house behind, where the cars go for a week, the apron on a main road and how long the concrete takes.
Length, and then whether two households have to keep using it while it is rebuilt. A 150 foot drive is 3 times the concrete of a tract drive, and pouring it in sections so the back house keeps a way out adds days, and both are written as their own lines. Tear-out of the old strip and the apron permit come next. The drive is measured on the visit, which costs nothing, and priced there in writing.
None for the drive, the patio or the walk inside the property. The apron and the sidewalk take an encroachment permit, and a wall past 4 feet or an ADU slab takes a building permit, both issued by the City of Lawndale Community Development Department at City Hall on Burin Avenue. East of Prairie Avenue the parcel is unincorporated and the permit is the County's, and we check which before we file.
Both households sign off on the estimate and both are told the days. We pour the drive in sections from the back forward, so the rear house parks on the finished section after 7 days while the front is done, and a joint is sawn on the lot line so each half is its own slab. Where the drive is owned by one lot and used by the other under an easement, the owner books the work and we keep the neighbor informed.
On the street for the nights the section they use is out, which we keep to a minimum by pouring in stages. A section takes feet after 24 hours and a car after 7 days, so a 3 section drive is out of use in thirds rather than all at once. The apron is done last and early in the morning, since it is the one piece that has to cure before any car crosses it, and we tell you the day before.
About a week on site for a full length drive poured in sections, 2 days for a garage slab or a patio, and 7 days of cure after each pour before it takes a car. Tear-out is the first day and the base goes in the second, and the pour of each section is one morning with the joints sawn that afternoon. The apron waits on the City's encroachment permit, which is filed at the start.
No. The city sits on the same sand as the rest of the plain between the 405 and the beach, and it drains, compacts and does not swell. The old drives failed because they were poured thin, without joints, and dead level, so water sat on them and cars broke them. A new one on compacted rock with a fall and a joint every 10 feet has nothing under it to move.
Lawndale sits between Hawthorne to the north, Redondo Beach to the west and Torrance to the south, with Gardena across the county pocket to the east. All four are covered from the office on Hawthorne Boulevard, and each has a page for its own ground.
Open the Torrance Office in Google Maps Send the form and we phone back within 1 business day with a day for the visit. The figure is written at your door at no charge, and the drive carries a written guarantee.