Hawthorne Torrance Concrete pours patios behind the tract houses of the plain and the hill houses of the Riviera, finished when the slab is ready and textured so nobody slips on a June morning.
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Under the marine layer
A patio is finished on the concrete's clock, and under the marine layer that clock runs slow. Fresh concrete bleeds water to its surface for an hour or two after it is placed, and on a cool gray morning in Torrance that water sits there instead of evaporating. Trowel over it and the top quarter inch is weakened, and it flakes off in scales the first winter. So the finisher waits for the sheen to go and works the slab when it is ready, which some mornings is after lunch.
Hawthorne Torrance Concrete was founded in 2017 by Kenji Okamoto, after 19 years finishing flatwork on South Bay crews, and he is on the trowel at every patio pour. Most of the patios in the city were poured in the 1950s and 1960s as a small pad at the sliding door, steel troweled smooth because that was the fashion, and half a century of shade and dew has made that smooth surface the slickest square in the yard. The new slab gets a texture that grips when it is wet.
Patios are built to the California Residential Code under the CSLB C-8 concrete license, with liability insurance on every job. A slab on the ground inside your lot line needs no permit from the City, but a cover over it does, from Community Development, and its posts stand on footings we pour with the slab so the two never move apart. The finished patio carries a written workmanship guarantee against defects in how it was built.
Slick, flaked or sunk
A dark film on the shaded half of the slab from December to March is algae growing on a surface that never dries, and a smooth troweled finish holds it. Pressure washing takes it off for a month. Under it the slab is slick the whole time, and that is what a barefoot child crosses.
Thin scales breaking away and leaving a rough gray patch underneath are the sign of a slab finished over its bleed water, and once the skin has gone the patch spreads each year. No coating puts the surface back, because the weak layer is the concrete itself and not something on it.
A wet line on the stucco after a rain, or a puddle at the sliding door, means the slab has settled toward the house or was poured flat. Water held against the sill finds the framing, and on a slab poured tight to the threshold, as most here were, it has nowhere else to go.
The small pad the tract builder poured at the door, with the furniture spilling onto the lawn beside it, is not failing but it is not a patio. A slab poured against it cracks at the joint between them, so the old pad comes out and the new one goes in as one piece, sized to the yard.
Standard on every slab
Eight things are in every patio without a separate line on the estimate, and each answers something a yard in Torrance does, a marine layer that keeps the slab wet till noon, a flat lot with no fall to spare, and a house wall the water must not reach.
The tract pad and any brick or paver edging go to the crusher the first morning, down to soil, rather than being poured over.
A test hole where the slab will sit says whether the yard is the sandy loam of the plain or clay off the hill, and the base is built to the answer.
Crushed rock compacted in lifts and graded a quarter inch a foot away from the house, so the slab sheds toward the lawn before it is poured.
3,500 psi mix at 4 inches with welded mesh held at mid-depth on chairs, the thickness a patio needs whether or not a cover goes on later.
The surface is set below the door threshold, with a groove along the wall, because a patio poured tight to the stucco is a channel into the house.
The surface is broomed only after the bleed water has gone, however long the marine layer makes that take, so the top never scales.
Where a patio cover is planned, its post footings are dug and poured in the same visit, below the slab, so a post never sits on flatwork.
The slab is kept damp for a week, the lawn edge raked back to it, and the written guarantee handed over at the walk-through.
Four finishes
Four surfaces a patio here can be given, judged by how they behave on a morning when the marine layer has wet them. The slab under all four is the same 4 inches on mesh over compacted rock, so the table is about the top quarter inch.
| Option | Suits | Grip when damp | Sealing | Finishing time |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Broom finish | Any yard, and every one under a cover | Good, the ridges run across the fall | Penetrating sealer once cured | One pass, the day of the pour |
| Exposed aggregate | A shaded or north-facing yard | Strongest of the four, stone stands proud | Sealed once cured, again in a few years | Washed the same evening |
| Steel trowel | Under a roofed cover only | Poor, slick under dew and algae | Sealed, or left bare under the roof | Three passes as it sets |
| Stamped with grit sealer | A sunny yard on show from the house | Fair, only with grit in the sealer | Grit sealer, renewed every few years | Stamped and released the same day |
Broom is the least finishing work and stamped the most, in that order. The grip of each is decided on the pour day and cannot be added to a slab afterward.
Weather and the yard
A patio here answers to two things it cannot change. The marine layer keeps a back yard damp from May into July, and the lot behind a tract house is flat, small and paved to the door.
The marine layer is a finishing problem first. On an inland pour the bleed water is gone in an hour and the broom follows the screed. Here a slab placed at eight can still carry a sheen at eleven, and a crew working to the clock rather than the concrete trowels that water back in, which is the flaked, dusting surface on so many patios in Southwood and West Torrance. So the pour goes in early, and the broom goes on when a thumb at the edge leaves a print and no water.
A tract lot on the plain gives a patio a few inches of fall at most, so the base is graded away from the house and the slab is held below the sill. Where the yard backs onto the Riviera slope the ground is clay, and the slab gets a thickened edge on the downhill side so the wet season cannot undermine it. Since the patio is the biggest slab in most yards, an ADU planned behind the house is drawn on the same sketch and shares the pump day.
Five stages
Five stages, the same crew at each, and the finisher who sets the texture on the pour day is the one who walks it with you a week later. The date is chosen by the forecast, because a patio is not poured onto a wet night.
Kenji Okamoto measures the slab you want, shoots the sill and the lawn, and opens the ground where it will sit. The figure is written there.
You pick the surface from the table above, say whether a cover is coming, and take a week. If it is, the permit for the cover is filed first.
The old pad comes out, the subgrade is cut to fall away from the house, and any clay or fill found in the hole is dug out and replaced with rock.
Rock compacted in lifts, forms set below the sill, mesh on chairs, then the pour goes in before the sun is on the yard.
The broom or the wash goes on when the bleed water has gone, the joints are cut that afternoon, and the slab is kept damp for seven days.
Four kinds of yard
Size starts the figure, and access and finish end it. Two patios of the same footprint can be half a day apart once the side yard is walked and the surface chosen, so nothing is quoted from a photo. Every estimate is measured and written on site.
Behind a 1950s house on sandy loam is the simplest job here, and what moves it is whether the old pad comes out and how far the pump reaches.
A shared yard behind a duplex or a condo court is poured as one slab with the joints drawn to the units, and one figure is written for the whole.
A yard on the Riviera clay needs a deeper base, a thickened downhill edge and sometimes a low wall to hold it, and the pump line runs uphill.
Exposed aggregate adds a wash the same evening, stamping adds a crew on the day and a sealer after, and a colored mix is a line from the plant.
Nothing is charged for the visit or the written figure, and the reply that fixes a day 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 measures the yard, shoots the sill and the lawn, opens the ground and writes the figure at your house. Sleep on it as long as you like.
Patios we poured
Three reviews from Google, Facebook and the BBB, each about a patio rather than a drive or a slab, and each naming the finish, the size or the morning it was poured.
“Our 1957 house in Southwood had the original smooth pad at the slider, green every winter and slick as ice. They took it out, poured 320 square feet at 4 inches on mesh with a broom finish and set it an inch below the sill. First wet morning I walked out in socks and did not think about it.”
“We wanted exposed aggregate and two other outfits told us the marine layer made it a gamble. Kenji Okamoto poured at seven, waited out the gray till nearly noon, and washed the stone out that evening. Eighteen feet by twenty, it grips wet or dry and the color has not moved in two summers.”
“Our yard in Walteria falls toward the house and every rain came under the door. They cut the ground to fall the other way, thickened the downhill edge into the clay, and poured the footings for our cover with the slab. Two winters on and the sill has stayed dry the whole time.”
Asked before booking
What moves the figure, how long the yard is out of use, whether a cover changes the permit, what the guarantee holds and what to do about the side gate, answered for a yard here.
Access, then finish, and only then the square footage. A yard reached by a pump at the street is a morning's pour; one where the line has to run round a garage and over a wall, or where the mix is barrowed through a side gate, is a day. Exposed aggregate and stamping each add work on the pour day and a sealer after. The old pad coming out is a line of its own. All of it is walked at the visit and written down.
About ten days from the first morning to the first chair. Break-out and grade take a day, base and forms a second, and the pour is one morning with the finish following when the slab is ready, which under the marine layer can run past noon. Then seven days damp before furniture goes on it. You can walk across it in two days, so the way to the garage or the side gate is not cut off for long.
Yes, down to soil and away to the crusher, along with any brick edging, a rotten cover or a planter built against it. The base, the mesh and the pump are on the figure too. Named at the visit rather than added later are the things the ground hides, a clay drain found under the pad, a sprinkler main that has to be moved, or a gas line to a barbecue. What you sign is what you are billed.
The slab does not, because the California Residential Code exempts flatwork inside your lot line. A cover over it does, whether it is an aluminum kit or a framed roof, and Community Development wants footings under the posts and a drawing of them, which is why the footings are poured with the slab and not cored through it later. We file whatever the job needs and meet the inspector in the yard.
Almost never. A slab that has settled toward the house, flaked or gone green is wear, and policies treat settlement and surface failure as maintenance rather than a sudden loss. The exception is a covered event, a tree brought down across it or a water main washing the base out. Then the estimate is itemized so an adjuster can read it, and the photographs should be taken before anything is broken out.
The build, meaning the base, the fall away from the house, the thickness, the mesh, the joints and the finish it was given, with the terms on the estimate before you sign. Algae in a shaded corner, furniture scratches and stains from a planter are not defects, and neither is a hairline crack inside a sawn joint. A surface that scales because it was finished too early is ours, and we come back for it.
A 3,500 psi ready-mix at 4 inches over compacted crushed rock, with welded mesh on chairs at mid-depth, and fiber added to the mix when the slab is being stamped. Sealers are a penetrating silane on a broom or aggregate finish and an acrylic with grit for stamped work. Everything is named on the estimate, so you can stand at the curb and check the ticket on the truck against it.
For the measurement and the walk-through, yes. For the pour the crew needs the side gate open, a hose bib, the dog indoors and the furniture off the yard, and a note of where the sprinkler heads are so the pump line does not sit on them. If the gate is narrower than a barrow, say so at the visit and the pump is booked instead. On the day expect the truck at the curb from early morning until the slab is finished.
Nearby towns
The eight nearest towns on the list, each with the straight-line distance from the office on Hawthorne Boulevard beside it. Every patio is measured at the yard before a figure is written.
Four jobs that share a yard, a pump day or a permit with a new patio, poured by the same crew and set out on the one written estimate rather than quoted apart.
The step down from the sliding door where the slab has been held below the sill.
The slab for an ADU behind the house, poured on the same pump day as the patio.
On a Riviera yard, the low wall that holds the slope off the downhill edge of the slab.
The same 4-inch slab and broom finish carried round a pool, with a coping band at the water.
Call or send the form and you hear back within 1 business day. Say how the yard is reached from the street and which finish you have in mind, and the visit is booked for a day inside the same week.