Salas Outdoor builds backyards and pours concrete in Chowchilla, at the top of the stretch of Highway 99 we run regularly out of Clovis. The older neighborhoods near downtown and Chowchilla Union High School carry homes from the 1950s through the 1970s with original driveways and patios well past their design life, while the newer tracts on the south side of town arrive as bare dirt with a builder slab and nothing else.
We take on the whole yard here: patios, driveways, pool decks, covers, kitchens, turf and walls, poured and built by the same crew, and the concrete underneath every part of it is ours, not subcontracted out.
Older in-town lots and newer south side growth
In-town Chowchilla lots tend to have an original driveway and patio slab from decades ago, cracked and scaled at the surface and usually worth removing and repouring rather than patching, since a patch over a slab that has already failed once tends to fail again at the same joint. Mature street trees around the older grid have lifted some walkways and driveway panels too, which we fix with root removal and a barrier rather than a pour straight over the problem.
The newer subdivisions on the south side of town are the opposite situation: a bare lot with a small builder patio and a fence, and everything past that open. Laying the whole yard out at once, even if it gets built in stages, is the efficient move here, because the drainage, the irrigation and any future kitchen or fire pit gas lines can go in while the ground is still open rather than being trenched back through finished work later.
- Original 1950s to 1970s driveways and patios replaced rather than patched
- Root damaged flatwork repaired with removal and a root barrier
- Bare south side lots designed and built from scratch
- Whole yard planned even when it gets built in phases
Valley heat, hardpan and farm dust
Chowchilla sits in open farm country, and wind carries dust off the surrounding fields onto every finished surface, which is part of why a broom finish or a mid tone exposed aggregate wash holds up better here visually than a very dark or very smooth slab. The ground is the same valley hardpan found across the region, so it gets ripped and compacted properly rather than worked around, and we watch the pour window through the worst of a summer that regularly clears 105 degrees.
Chowchilla questions, answered
What we build in Chowchilla, how quickly we get there, and what it costs to find out.
Do you come out to Chowchilla, or is it too far from Clovis?
We come out. Chowchilla is a straight run up Highway 99 and it is inside the area we work regularly, not a special trip. We aim to be out the same day, or within 24 hours if your call lands on a weekend.
Can you match an original driveway from the 1960s?
Sometimes, and we will tell you honestly whether a match is realistic before you pay for one. Aggregate sizes and finishes have changed over the decades, so a close match is more common than a perfect one, and on a heavily cracked original slab, full replacement usually reads better than a patched match anyway.
We have a bare lot on the south side. Where do we start?
With the whole yard on paper, even if you only build part of it now. We lay out the patio, the drainage and any utility runs a future kitchen or fire feature will need while the lot is still open, then price it so you can build now and add later without paying to trench back through finished concrete.
