Hawthorne Torrance Concrete pours barn aprons, wash racks, drives and walls in Rolling Hills Estates, on ground that swells every winter. Every estimate is measured and written on site.
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Rolling Hills Estates is the north side of the Palos Verdes Peninsula, gentler than the ocean side but on the same bentonite, which swells in a wet winter, shrinks by summer and takes a slab with it.
The clay is why the peninsula's old slabs are broken. A drive poured flat onto it in 1960 has been lifted at its middle every wet winter and dropped again every fall, and after sixty of those it has cracked into plates that rock. It is worse on a cut lot, where the house sits on firm shale and the yard is on the fill the grader pushed out to make the pad, so a slab spanning the two moves at a different rate at each end. The lots along Palos Verdes Drive North show it plainly.
So the slab is built to move as one piece, and to keep water off the clay. We dig out the top of the clay, lay 6 inches of rock rather than 4 and compact it, and pour 5 inches on number 4 steel at 12 inches so the slab is stiff enough to bridge a soft patch. The edge is thickened to 12 inches all round, the ground beside it is pitched away so no water sits at the slab, and the joints are cut close so the panels are small. A barn floor gets the same base and a fall to a drain.
Rolling Hills Estates keeps horses, and the concrete follows them. A stall row needs a dry floor, a wash rack needs a slab that falls to a drain, a trailer needs a pad, and all of it goes in on the one ground on the peninsula that moves.
Drives in Rolling Hills Estates are long, since the house sits back on a large lot and the barn sits behind it, and the old ones have cracked into plates on the clay. We pour them at 5 inches on 6 inches of rock, steel at 12 inches, edges thickened, and cut the panels short.
A patio here looks down the hill, and a slab that holds water on its uphill side feeds the clay under itself. We pour at 4 inches on a thick rock base, pitch it away from the house, run a drain along the high edge and seal it, so the clay stays as dry as the winter allows.
Stamped concrete on the peninsula is a front entry or a courtyard, set in a stone pattern to sit with the ranch houses of the 1950s and 60s. The base under it is the clay base, 6 inches of rock, and the pattern is cast into a 4 inch slab and sealed against the damp mornings.
Walks in Rolling Hills Estates run beside a bridle trail, and where a private walk meets the trail easement the grade has to suit a horse as well as a foot. We replace the panel on compacted rock, dowel it to what it meets, and file it with the city where it touches the trail.
Garages here hold a truck and a trailer as often as a car, and an old 3 inch floor on the clay has heaved at its middle. We break it out, rock the base to 6 inches, and pour 5 inches with steel, troweled flat enough to coat and pitched to the door so a wash-down runs out.
Exposed aggregate suits a property with animals, since river stone washed proud of the surface holds a wet boot and a hoof where a smooth slab does not. We pour it at 4 inches on the peninsula base with a smooth banded border, and seal it once the cure is complete.
Walls hold nearly every cut on the peninsula, and bentonite pushes harder on a wall than any other clay we build against. We foot the wall below the clay's active layer, drain behind the stem with rock and a perforated pipe, and file any wall over 4 feet at City Hall first.
Barn and stall floors are the interior slabs of Rolling Hills Estates, with the odd tack room. We pour on 6 inches of rock over the clay, pitch every stall floor to a drain, broom it coarse so a wet hoof holds, and cure it a full week before a horse stands on it.
Hawthorne Boulevard runs from our door in Torrance straight up the hill into Rolling Hills Estates, past the Peninsula Center at Silver Spur Road, so a crew is on a lot here in about 15 minutes with no freeway in it. The city incorporated in 1957 to keep its horse keeping and its large lots, and it has. Bridle trails run beside the streets, so a new drive approach crosses a trail as well as a curb, and we set the crossing to the grade the trail needs before the city looks at it.
Permits are filed at Rolling Hills Estates City Hall on Palos Verdes Drive North. Flatwork inside the lot needs none, but a wall over 4 feet, a barn slab, a drive approach and anything that regrades a slope needs one, and the city looks hard at hillside grading because of what the clay does once cut. On the Dapplegray streets and the lanes off it the barns and arenas are behind the house, so the mixer stays on the drive and the concrete is pumped the rest of the way.
The peninsula has its own weather. It is cooler and wetter on the hill, the marine layer sits on it longer in the morning, and a storm that gives Torrance an inch gives the top of the hill more. We pour barn and stall floors in the dry months from June to October, when the clay is at its driest and the base compacts hardest, and drives whenever a dry week can be found. Every slab is sealed, so water off the surface goes to the drain instead of into the clay under the edge.
Four steps, one crew, and a written figure measured on the lot. On a horse property the barn work is booked around the animals, so a stall row is done in halves when it has to be.
Kenji Okamoto measures, probes the clay, checks whether the slab sits on cut or fill, sees where the winter water runs and writes the figure.
The top of the clay comes out, 6 inches of rock goes in and is plate-compacted in lifts, and the drain lines for a wash rack go in first.
A wall, a barn slab or an approach is filed at City Hall, with the trail crossing drawn on it. A patio inside the lot needs nothing filed.
Poured at 5 inches on steel, pitched to a drain or away from the house, joints cut that day, kept damp a week and sealed at 28 days.
Call or send the form and we reply within 1 business day with a day. Say whether the job is a drive, a barn or a wall, and whether it sits on the cut side of the lot or the fill side if you know, and Kenji Okamoto brings the probe for the clay.
Reviews
Our own reviews on Google, Facebook and the BBB, left by owners across the South Bay. The peninsula ones are barn floors, walls and drives, and they read the way the work above is described.
“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.”
What owners on the hill ask before a pour, on cost, the clay, permits and grading, how the barn work is timed around the horses, how long a slab is out of use and what else on the peninsula we cover.
The base, before anything else. A slab on the peninsula's clay gets 6 inches of rock and a thicker, stiffer pour than one on the Torrance flat, and that is the line on the estimate that differs most. After it comes access, since a barn or an arena apron behind the house is pumped from the drive, and then the area. The figure is measured at the lot and written there.
Not for a patio, a walk or a drive inside your lot line. A retaining wall over 4 feet, a slab under a barn or a cover, a new drive approach across the bridle trail and any work that regrades a slope is filed at City Hall on Palos Verdes Drive North, and the city inspects the base and the steel before the pour. We file it and meet the inspector.
Bentonite clay. It runs through the peninsula in beds that swell in a wet winter and shrink by the fall, and a slab poured flat onto them is lifted and dropped once a year until it breaks. The cure is to keep water out of the clay and build a slab stiff enough to move as one piece, which means a thick rock base, a thickened edge, closer steel and a pitch that carries water to a drain.
Yes, in halves. A stall row is poured one side at a time so the horses move across rather than off the property, and a wash rack is built with its drain first so it can be used the day it takes weight. Floors under animals are pitched to a drain, broomed coarse so a wet hoof holds, and cured a full 7 days before a horse stands on them.
Three to four days on site for a drive or a barn floor, a day longer than the same slab on the flat, because the clay comes out and 6 inches of rock goes back in. Feet are fine after 24 to 48 hours, a car after 7 days, a trailer or a horse after 28. Winter dates move with the rain more than they do in Torrance, since the hill takes longer to dry.
Palos Verdes Estates and Rancho Palos Verdes, from the same office, and Lomita at the foot of the hill. The clay is the same across the first two, so the specification is the same, and what differs is the permit counter, which is each city's own. Rolling Hills, the gated city in the middle of the peninsula, is not on our list.
Rolling Hills Estates shares the hill with Palos Verdes Estates and Rancho Palos Verdes and drops to Torrance and Lomita at its foot, and we cover all of them from the one office. If your street is on a city line, the next town's page is the one to read.
Open the Torrance Office in Google Maps Send the form and we call back within 1 business day to fix the visit. The estimate is measured and written at the lot at no charge, and every slab carries a written guarantee.