Sunroom contractor in Rialto, CA - rooms built on slabs that can carry them

Most of what we see in Rialto is single-story stucco houses with a concrete patio out back, and a lot of those slabs went in decades ago to hold a cover, not a room. A slab like that can crack at the edges once it carries walls, a roof and glass, so I look at its thickness, the cracks it already has and which way it sheds water before I say we can build on it. When it isn't up to the job, we pour new footings along the edge or replace the slab, and the estimate says which one and why. The stucco wall matters just as much, because that's where the roof ties in, and a poor flashing job there is the leak I'm called out to fix more than any other.

Rialto's building code notes that two earthquake fault systems, the San Jacinto and the Rialto-Colton, run within the city's limits. That's said of the city as a whole and doesn't map your lot in particular, but it's one more reason I pay close attention to how the room is anchored to its footings and fastened to the house.

In Rialto, the permit for your room comes from the city's Building Department, and the build can't start until the city has reviewed the plans and issued it, so the review usually sets your start date more than our crew's calendar does. We take care of the permits the building office asks for on our jobs, and the contract says in writing that we're handling them. Before you hire anyone, check two things, because California requires a state contractor's license and Rialto also requires a city business license from any state-licensed contractor who bids on or does work here, subcontractors included. We're licensed and fully insured. The price moves most with the size of the room and whether your slab or deck can carry it as it is, and the written estimate I leave you lists what's in it and what isn't.

We're a sunroom contractor based in Redlands, and we come over to Rialto the same way we head out to Fontana to the west and Colton to the southeast. The houses on either side of those city lines are a lot alike, so what I learn about slabs and roof tie-ins in one place carries over to the next, but the permit always goes to the city the house sits in, and we sort that out before anything else.

Rialto is mostly neighborhoods of single-family houses, with older streets toward the middle of the city and newer tracts further out, and a good share of the calls we get are about the back of a house that's been lived in a long time. We see a lot of patio covers added by a past owner, rooms closed in without much thought for drainage, and slabs that have settled a little toward the house.

It's much like what we find across the line in San Bernardino. On these lots the room usually has to fit onto what's already out back, so the job starts with the slab, the wall and the roofline, and the glass comes after.