Hawthorne Torrance Concrete pours bay floors with a fall to the door, troweled dense and sealed, so the drip off a wet car leaves the way it came in. Every estimate is measured and written on site.
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How a bay floor is built here
A garage floor in Torrance is judged by where the water goes. Through May, June and July the marine layer wets the car before it leaves the drive, and it comes home at night the same way, so a bay here takes water off the bodywork most days of the summer. A floor floated level in 1955 holds that where it lands, along the walls and under the car, and the slab drinks it. Pour the floor with a fall to the door and a surface tight enough to shed, and the bay stays dry.
Hawthorne Torrance Concrete was founded in 2017 by Kenji Okamoto, who put in 19 years on South Bay crews first, and he lays out the fall on the forms himself before the truck is called. Most bays in the tracts of West, North and Southeast Torrance were floated flat when the house went up, with the apron outside poured level to meet them, so nothing ever told the water to leave. Sixty years of that is a dark band along the back wall and a pitted strip where the car has stood.
Floors are built to the California Residential Code under a CSLB C-8 concrete license, with liability insurance on every job. A floor inside a bay that stays a garage is a question for the City's Community Development Department at City Hall on Torrance Boulevard, put to the counter before the date is fixed. A bay becoming a room is permitted with the conversion. The finished floor carries a written workmanship guarantee against defects in how it was built.
Repair or replace
A puddle inside the door an hour after the hose or a night of drizzle means the floor falls the wrong way. The apron was poured level with the slab, so whatever lands in the first three feet of the bay stays there. It soaks the door and the slab under it, and no coating cures that.
Drips off a wet car land in the same four spots every night, and on an unsealed floor they leave a rust colored ring where brake dust and water dried together. The stain is harmless. What it says is that the surface is open, and open concrete takes water in rather than passing it on.
Cardboard that goes limp on the floor at the back of the bay is sitting on a slab that is damp from underneath. Nothing was laid under the old floors here to stop ground moisture rising, and with the door shut it goes into whatever stands on the slab. Dry to the eye, wet to touch.
A crack that has lifted on one side, so the door scrapes or the car bumps over it, is the slab moving on ground that never carried it evenly. That is past patching. The high side keeps rising each wet winter and the low side sinking, and a topping splits along the same line.
In every floor
Eight things are in every floor without a separate line, and each answers what a bay in this city does. It takes a wet car in every summer morning and every winter night, sits over ground that was never sheeted, and has an apron outside poured level with it.
The slab is saw cut inside the footing line so the stem wall under the garage walls is left standing, then broken out and hauled the same day.
The exposed subgrade is probed for soft spots and for fill the builder tipped in, and what is found sets the depth of rock that goes back.
Crushed rock goes in shallow and each layer is plate compacted, so the floor bears evenly and the door side is as firm as the back wall.
A 10-mil vapor retarder is laid over the base and taped at every lap, so ground moisture stops under the slab instead of rising into the bay.
The screed rails are set an eighth of an inch a foot higher at the back wall than at the door, so the whole bay drains out through the opening.
Rebar sits on chairs in the middle of the slab, not on the sheet, so a crack that does form is held shut and stays where a joint put it.
A steel trowel closes the surface so it sheds water rather than drinking it, and the joints are cut the afternoon of the pour.
We hose the finished floor and watch it drain out the door with you, check it against the estimate, and hand over the written guarantee.
How it can be built
Four ways to put a floor in a bay here, set against what the bay is for and how the surface handles a wet car. The base, the sheet and the fall are the same in all four, so the table is about the top of the slab and what it will take afterward.
| Option | Suits | Surface | Under a wet car | Back in use |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Troweled and sealed | A bay that stays a garage for two cars | Steel troweled, penetrating sealer at 28 days | Sheds to the door, wipes clean | 7 days for the car |
| Densified shop floor | A lift, a bench or a bay used as a shop | Troweled, then a silicate densifier | No dusting, oil sits on top | 7 days, 28 for the lift |
| Floor for a converted bay | A bay becoming an ADU or a room | Sheeted, insulated at the edge, level | Not a bay any more, so stays dry | 7 days before framing |
| Bonded topping | A sound floor that is pitted, not cracked | Three quarters of an inch, ground first | Takes the old floor's fall, if it has one | 3 days for the car |
The bonded topping is the least work of the four and is only for a floor that is sound and flat; the shop floor is the most, and its pads cannot be added later.
Flats and fog
Two things meet in a bay here. A car that is wet most mornings from May into August, and a drive on a plain so flat that the apron outside was poured level with the floor.
The plain the tracts were built on runs flat from Old Torrance to the 405, and a level lot was a gift to the builders of the 1950s, who poured drive, apron and bay floor to one height in a morning. That was the fault. Rain off the drive has no reason to stay outside, and the drip off a car that sat under the marine layer since dawn lands in a bay that cannot pass it on. On the plain we correct it in the forms, an eighth of an inch a foot from the back wall to the door.
Up in Walteria and the Hollywood Riviera the drive climbs to the door and the bay is cut into the hillside, so the water arrives from above and the ground behind the back wall holds it. There the floor gets a trench drain across the door as well, and the base under it is opened to gravel that drains to the street. Below the floor the story is the same across the city, a slab floated on bare loam, which is why every old floor is cut free of its footing and the ground sheeted first.
From call to cure
Five stages, the same crew at each, and the person who shoots the levels in the bay is the person setting the screed rails at the pour. The counter at City Hall is asked its question before a date goes in the book.
Kenji Okamoto shoots the sill, the door track and the apron with a level, sounds the old slab for hollows and writes the figure before he leaves.
You pick the surface against what the bay is for, the permit question goes to the City, and the cars come out for the week booked.
The slab is sawn inside the footing, broken out and hauled, and the subgrade is probed and any fill dug out until it proves under a plate.
Base compacted in layers, the retarder laid and taped, rebar on chairs, then the pour screeded to the fall and closed with a steel trowel.
Joints sawn that afternoon, the slab kept wet for seven days, then the hose test at the door and the paperwork on the walk-through.
Behind the number
The bay's size starts the figure and what the old slab is tied to finishes it. A floor poured with the footing takes a day of cutting a floating one does not, so nothing is quoted from a photograph. Every estimate is measured and written on site.
A bay in the postwar tracts of West and North Torrance is attached, floated with the footing, and has an apron outside that needs stepping down.
The parking under a 1960s building on Hawthorne or Crenshaw is poured in halves so tenants keep a space, and the fall runs to a drain, not a door.
A bay cut into the slope takes a trench drain at the door and a drained base behind the back wall, and the pump for the pour is set on the street.
Thickened pads under a lift, a densified surface or the level, insulated floor a conversion is permitted to, each measured as its own area.
The visit and the written figure cost nothing, and the call to fix a time for it comes within 1 business day. (424) 484-9860 or send us a message.
Send the form or call, and someone rings back within 1 business day to fix a time. Kenji Okamoto shoots the levels, sounds the old slab and writes the figure in your bay, and you are free to put it in a drawer.
Floors we replaced
Three reviews left on Google, Facebook and the BBB, each about a garage floor rather than a drive or a patio, and each saying where the water went once the new slab was in.
“Our bay in Southwood had a puddle inside the door every time the marine layer came in. They cut the old floor out, sheeted it, and poured the new one falling to the door with a step down to the apron. I hosed it a month later and watched it all run out into the drive.”
“I run a lift in the garage of a house off Crenshaw and the old floor had cracked under one post. Kenji Okamoto poured the pads under the posts thicker than the rest, densified the surface and it has not dusted once. The lift went back on at 28 days and has been up daily since.”
“Our garage is cut into the hill in the Riviera and the back wall sweated all winter. They put a trench drain across the door, gravel behind the wall to a pipe out to the street, and a sheeted floor over it. After the January rains the back of the bay was dry for the first time in years.”
Before you book
What moves the figure on a bay floor, how long the cars are on the street, which floors the City permits, and what is guaranteed once the trowel is off it, answered for a garage here.
Whether the old floor was poured with the footing, and what the bay is for. A slab tied into the stem wall has to be saw cut free along every wall before it can come out, which is a day a floating slab does not take, and a bay used as a shop or becoming a room carries pads, a densifier or insulation at the edge that a two-car garage does not. Both are seen at the visit and written down there.
About ten days from breaker to parking. Cutting and breaking out is the first day, base, sheet and steel the second, the pour and finish the third morning, and then the slab is kept wet for seven days before a car goes on it. Anything heavier, a lift or a loaded trailer, waits 28 days. Through a marine layer summer the cure runs no differently, since the bay is under a roof either way.
Yes. Cutting it free, breaking it out, loading it and hauling it to the crusher is in the figure, and so is digging out any fill found underneath. What sits outside the figure is named at the visit rather than added later, whether a footing found cracked once the floor is up, a water line under the slab, or a door that has to come off its track. The number you sign is the one on the bill.
Sometimes, and we ask rather than assume. A floor poured back like for like inside a bay that stays a garage is put to the City's Community Development Department at City Hall before the date is set, and a bay becoming a room or an ADU is permitted with the conversion and inspected before the pour. The apron and the curb take an encroachment permit from Public Works. We file both and meet the inspector.
Rarely. A slab that has lifted or cracked over sixty years on ground that was never compacted is settlement, and policies here treat settlement and wear as maintenance rather than a sudden loss. A burst water line under the floor, or a car through the back wall, is the kind of event a policy may cover. Photograph the floor before anything is cut, and ask your carrier before you book us.
How it was built. The base compacted, the sheet laid and taped, the thickness poured, the fall to the door, the steel and the joints, with those terms printed on the estimate before you sign. It is a written workmanship guarantee against defects in how it was built. Staining, tire marks, wear and ground moving beyond what the joints control sit outside it. Where the fault is ours we come back and put it right.
A 3,500 psi ready-mix placed the morning it is batched, crushed rock base under it, a 10-mil polyethylene vapor retarder taped at the laps, and number 4 rebar on an 18 inch grid held up on chairs. The sealer is a penetrating one, applied at 28 days, and a shop floor takes a lithium silicate densifier first. The mix, the steel and the sheet are named on the estimate, so what arrives can be checked against it.
Only for the measurement at the start and the walk-through at the end. In between the crew needs water, power for the saw, the door open and everything off the floor, and the cars will be on the street for about ten days. Whatever is stored in the bay can go in the yard under a tarp for the week or in our trailer on the drive, and we say which at the visit so nothing is moved twice.
Towns we pour in
The eight nearest towns on the list, with the straight-line distance from the office on Hawthorne Boulevard beside each. Every floor is measured in the bay before a figure is written.
Four jobs that tend to be booked with a new bay floor or straight after it, on the same base and the same week, by the same crew, and itemized on the one written estimate.
The apron the floor drains onto, stepped down and re-poured with the bay.
The old floor sawn free of the footing, and a trench drain cut into a hillside bay.
The floor a bay becoming an ADU is permitted to, insulated at the edge and level.
A polished or stained floor inside a bay that has stopped being a garage.
Call or send the form and you hear back within 1 business day. Say whether the bay is attached, what stands in it and whether water gets in at the door, and the visit can be booked for a day inside the same week.