Hawthorne Torrance Concrete builds drives with the fall the tract builders left out, and ties down the steep runs on the Riviera so they stop creeping. Every estimate is measured and written on site.
5.0 Stars Rated by our customers · Google, Facebook and the BBB
Grade before concrete
A driveway fails by the water it holds before it fails by the weight it carries. On the Torrance plain a lot may drop only an inch or two between the garage door and the street, so a drive poured level, as most of the postwar ones were, holds every damp morning and every rain against the garage slab until the base under that end goes soft. Set a fall of a quarter inch a foot from the door to the gutter and the water leaves before it can do anything.
Hawthorne Torrance Concrete was founded in 2017 by Kenji Okamoto, who spent 19 years on South Bay crews first, and he shoots the levels himself on every drive. The garage floor is fixed, the gutter is the City's, and the drive has to be drawn between the two, which is why a laser and not a tape is the first tool out of the truck. On the Riviera the problem reverses, and a run dropping a foot in ten has to be textured and tied so a car stops on it and the slab stays put.
Drives are built to the California Residential Code under the CSLB C-8 concrete license, with liability insurance on every job. Everything from the garage door to the property line is yours and needs no permit. The apron is the City's, and its height at the gutter is fixed by Public Works with the encroachment permit, so the fall of your run is planned to meet it. The finished drive carries a written workmanship guarantee against defects in how it was built.
Symptoms of a bad grade
A puddle sitting against the garage door an hour after the marine layer lifts means the drive falls toward the house, not away from it. The slab was poured level or the street end has settled, and the water is soaking into the base at the one point that carries the car all night.
Stand at the gutter and sight along the drive. If the surface rises to the street and dips at the garage, the base under the garage end has washed out and the slab has rotated. Leveling compound on top would only move the puddle a foot. The fall has to be rebuilt from the ground up.
On the Riviera and Walteria hill lots a drive creeping downhill on wet clay opens a joint at the top, where it meets the garage floor, and the gap grows each winter. Once the slab has moved it keeps moving, since nothing under it is holding, and a crack across the run follows.
A pale streak on the apron and a rubbed underside on your car mean the break-over from the street to the run is too sharp, usually because someone patched the apron higher than it was. Grinding the ridge thins the thinnest concrete on the lot, so the apron is poured again instead.
Standard on every run
Eight things are in every drive and none is a separate line on the estimate. Each one comes from the two problems a Torrance lot sets, a plain so flat the fall has to be manufactured and a hill so steep the slab has to be held.
The garage floor, the gutter and the public walk are shot with a laser before anything is broken out, so the fall is a figure and not a guess.
Every panel is broken out and hauled the same day, down to soil, along with the old apron and any patch someone poured on top of it.
Two test holes, one at the door and one at the street, show whether the loam is sound or the garage end has been sitting in water for years.
Crushed rock is laid to the fall the finished slab will carry and compacted in two lifts, so the slab is one thickness for its whole length.
4 inches under cars and 5 where a pickup or a van stands overnight, with the depth written on the estimate you sign before the breaker starts.
The apron is poured on dowels drilled into the run and thickened at the gutter, the two places a drive on the plain cracks first.
Cut the afternoon of the pour so the shrinkage crack lands in a groove and not across the surface. On a hill run the panels are shorter.
Seven days kept damp, the parkway strip raked level, and the walk-through with the written guarantee before the truck pulls away.
Four ways to build it
Four ways to build a drive here, chosen by what the lot does between the garage door and the gutter and by what stands on the slab overnight. The base, the levels and the apron detail are the same in all four, so the table is about the slab itself.
| Option | Suits | Fall it carries | Steel in it | Surface |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 4-inch broom, flat run | Cars at a tract house on the plain | A quarter inch a foot, built into the base | Fiber through the mix | Light broom across the run |
| 5-inch run for a pickup | A work truck or a van kept at home | The same quarter inch a foot | Welded mesh at mid-depth | Medium broom across the run |
| 6-inch hill run | Riviera and Walteria slopes | Up to a foot in ten, keyed at the top | Number 4 rebar on a mat | Heavy broom in shorter panels |
| Two-strip ribbon drive | Old Torrance lots with a rear garage | Whatever the side yard already has | Rebar down each strip | Broom, with lawn between the strips |
The flat run takes the least concrete and the hill run the most, in that order. The fall is built into the base under every one of them and is never a separate line.
Grade and ground
A drive in Torrance is decided by how far it falls. On the plain that can be an inch or two across the whole lot, and on the Riviera a foot in every ten, and one slab cannot answer both.
The plain is the harder of the two, because there is nothing to work with. The tracts of West, North and Southeast Torrance went up on fields graded flat, and the builders set the garage floor a few inches above the street and poured the drive dead level between them. Sixty years of settlement at the garage end has taken even that difference away on many drives, so the fall is manufactured, by cutting the subgrade and building the base to a line shot from the gutter to the door.
The hill is the reverse problem. Above Pacific Coast Highway, in the Hollywood Riviera, Walteria and the streets climbing toward Palos Verdes, drives drop steeply to the road on ground that moves with the winter, so the slab is asked to hold still on a ramp. A hill run is poured at 6 inches on a rebar mat, keyed into the apron at the top, broomed heavily so a car stops on it when wet, and cut into shorter panels. Cut into a bank, it gets a retaining wall too.
Start to finish
Five stages with the same crew at each, and the person who shoots the levels on the first visit is the person checking them against the finished slab on the last. Anything at the apron is permitted before the breaker starts.
Kenji Okamoto measures the run, shoots the garage floor and the gutter, and digs a test hole at each end. The estimate is written before he leaves.
You set the thickness against what parks on it, choose the finish, and take a week. The apron's encroachment permit goes to Public Works first.
The old drive and apron go to the crusher, then the subgrade is cut to the new fall and any soft ground at the garage end is dug out and replaced.
Rock compacted in lifts to the fall, forms set to the line, then the pour goes in through the morning and is broomed across the run.
Joints sawn the same afternoon, the slab kept damp for a week, the parkway raked, and the levels checked with you against the estimate.
Four kinds of lot
The fall the lot needs starts the figure and what the test holes find finishes it. Two drives of the same size can be a day apart once the garage end is opened, so nothing is quoted from a photo. Every estimate is measured and written on site.
A single-car drive on a tract lot is mostly the work of manufacturing its fall, so the cut at the garage end moves the figure more than the width.
Two or four drives off one frontage share one apron and one pour, so the estimate is written per drive but the permit is one filing.
A steep run is 6 inches on rebar rather than 4, keyed at the top and cut into shorter panels, with the clay under it replaced. It is its own job.
Exposed aggregate, a colored mix or a stamped border band add finishing time on the day and a sealer after, each its own line on the estimate.
There is no charge for the visit or the written figure, and the reply that fixes a time for it comes within 1 business day. (424) 484-9860 or send us a message.
Send the form or call, and someone replies within 1 business day to fix a time. Kenji Okamoto shoots the levels, opens the ground at both ends and writes the figure at your house, and there is nothing to sign that day.
Drives we rebuilt
Three reviews from Google, Facebook and the BBB, each about a driveway and nothing else, and each naming the fall, the depth or the number of days it took.
“Our 1954 house in North Torrance had a drive that ran the wrong way and every June morning there was a puddle at the garage door. They cut the ground back at the house end, built the base to a new fall and poured it at 4 inches. It dries within an hour now, every time.”
“Our drive in the Riviera drops hard to the street and had crept a full inch away from the garage slab. Kenji Okamoto poured it at 6 inches on a rebar mat, keyed into the apron at the top and broomed so deep you can stop on it in the wet. Two winters on and the joint has not opened.”
“The apron on our Old Torrance bungalow had been patched so high the car scraped every time we pulled in, and the ribbon strips to the back garage were in pieces. They poured a new apron on the permit, then both strips at 5 inches. Three days on site, and the invoice matched the estimate.”
Before the visit
What moves the figure on a tract drive against a hill run, how many days the cars are on the street, which part the City signs off and what is guaranteed when the forms come off.
The depth of the cut at the garage end, more than the square footage. A drive that has held water for years has soft ground under the house end that has to come out, and a fall has to be built where there was none, so two drives of the same size can differ by a day of digging. Thickness is next, 5 inches for a pickup against 4 for cars, and a hill run on rebar is its own figure. All of it is measured at your lot.
Three days on site for a tract drive on the plain and four for a hill run, then seven days before a car goes on the slab. Break-out and the grade cut take the first day, the base and the forms the second, and the pour is one morning with the joints sawn that afternoon. On a hill run the dig is deeper and tying the rebar mat takes a day of its own. The marine layer helps a cure, so nothing is shortened for weather.
Yes, down to soil and away to the crusher, the apron and any patch on it included. The dig to the new fall and the rock that goes back in are on the figure too. What sits outside it is named at the visit rather than added later, an encroachment permit fee, a water meter box that has to be reset to the new grade, or a sprinkler line found under the old slab. The number you sign is the number on the invoice.
Not the run inside your property line, which the California Residential Code exempts. The apron between the walk and the gutter is public right-of-way, so Public Works issues an encroachment permit for it and inspects it, with the height at the gutter fixed to their line, which is why the fall of the run is planned from the street back. We file it, and a widened curb cut goes on the same permit.
No. A slab that has settled at one end over decades is wear, and a homeowner's policy treats settlement and shrinkage cracks as maintenance rather than as a sudden loss. What a policy does cover is a sudden event, a delivery truck breaking the apron or a burst main washing the base out from under the run, and then the estimate is written so an adjuster can read it. Photograph the damage before break-out.
How it was built, meaning the fall it was poured to, the base under it, the thickness, the steel and the joints, with the terms printed on the estimate before you sign. Tire marks, oil stains, wear, and a hill lot moving beyond what the joints and rebar were designed to hold sit outside it. Water at the garage door on a drive we built is ours to fix.
A 3,500 psi ready-mix placed the morning it is batched, over compacted crushed rock, with fiber in a 4-inch run, welded mesh in a 5-inch one and a number 4 rebar mat in a 6-inch hill run. The apron is poured on dowels drilled into the run so the two cannot step apart at the joint. The mix and the steel are named on the estimate, so what comes off the truck can be checked against what you agreed to before the pour.
Only for the levels at the start and the walk-through at the end. In between the crew needs a hose bib, the cars off the drive and, on a tract lot, the side gate unlocked if the pour is being shared with a patio behind the house. Your cars will be on the street for three days and off the new slab for seven, and if the drive is the only way to the garage, say so at the visit and the work is planned around it.
Nearby towns
The eight nearest towns on the list, each with the straight-line distance from the office on Hawthorne Boulevard beside it. Every drive is shot with a level at the property before a figure is written.
Four jobs that share a base detail or a pour day with a new drive, built by the same crew and itemized on the one written estimate rather than quoted apart.
The floor the drive falls away from, re-poured level and sealed so it hoses clean.
The public walk the apron crosses, poured on the same permit and the same morning.
On a hill run cut into the bank, the wall on footings that holds the slope off the slab.
An exposed-aggregate border band or a colored mix, finished on the day of the pour.
Call or send the form and you hear back within 1 business day. Say whether the house is on the plain or the hill and what parks on the drive overnight, and the visit is booked for a day inside the same week.