Concrete Sidewalk Building in El Monte CA - a firm, even path to walk on

Most calls start with an old walk that's broken into pieces or tips toward the house, or a new path you need from the driveway up to the front steps. The price moves with the length and width, how much old concrete has to come out, how much digging and base work it takes and how close we can get the truck. The schedule mostly turns on paperwork and weather, because a walk on public property brings a city permit and inspection, and a hot, windy day can push the pour. Your written estimate spells out what's in the price and what isn't.

First thing I ask is whether the walk runs on public property or inside your lot, because that decides which office we deal with. Then we lay it out and set the slope so water runs away from the house, dig down to firm subgrade, the ground the slab sits on, and pack a base on top of it. We set the forms and screed rails, the guides we level the concrete against, and add rebar, steel that holds the slab together if it cracks, where the job calls for it. On pour day we place and level the concrete, give it a broom finish so your shoes grip when it's wet, cut the control joints on time and keep it covered while it cures, the wait that lets it gain strength before anyone walks on it. On a summer job we plan the pour around the heat and the wind. If something has to give in the budget, I'd rather spend it on the base than the finish, because the finish is what you see on day one and the base is what decides whether the walk is still flat later.

A sidewalk often ties into other work. If the walk ends at a garage whose slab is cracked too, it's a good time to look at garage floor concrete while we're already set up. And if you'd rather have color or a pattern than plain gray, that's our decorative concrete work, built on the same packed base.

If the walk runs along the street, it's on public land, and the El Monte Public Works Department has to issue a permit before any work starts. The city's Engineering Division oversees private construction in that strip along the street, and work under the permit gets inspected and approved by the city and has to meet the Southern California public works standard the city follows. We pull that permit and line up the inspections. For a walk inside your lot, we check with Public Works before we price it rather than guess.

We're based in El Monte and work in the cities around it, out to West Covina and Pomona and others nearby. A lot of what we replace are older walks that have split into sections or slope back toward the house, and we see the same street-side walks on jobs in Rosemead and Monterey Park.