Backyard & Outdoor Living in Pomona

City of Pomona Development Services Department, Building and Safety Division. Residential permits come from the Building and Safety Division of the Development Services Department at City Hall, 505 South Garey Avenue, while zoning questions go to the Planning Division in the same department. The division's grading handout requires a grading permit, with plans stamped by a California-registered professional engineer and a geotechnical report, for earthwork that disturbs at least 50 cubic yards of soil or that the Building Official calls for based on site characteristics or location. The Zoning and Development Code's pool standards keep a pool and its mechanical equipment at least 5 feet from rear, side and street-side lot lines and out of utility easements, and keep a pool with more than 150 square feet of water surface at least 5 feet from any wall of the house. The division's fencing handout calls for a permanent 5-foot fence completely surrounding any pool, spa or other body of water over 24 inches deep, in place and approved by the building inspector before plastering and filling. In the six historic districts, the code's definition of alteration reaches grading, surface paving, walls, fences and tree removal, and no permit is issued for work on a historical resource until a Certificate of Appropriateness or Certificate of Historic Compliance is in place. Additions and new accessory structures there go to the Historic Preservation Commission for a Major Certificate of Appropriateness, and where an ADU needs one, the code limits that review to architecture. We prepare the drawings, make the submittal and handle plan-check corrections ourselves, so you are not the one chasing plan check.

Single-family streets on the older gridded blocks around downtown, where a historic district shows up on the zoning map as an -H suffix, and the master-planned tracts of Phillips Ranch and Mountain Meadows, laid out after most of the valley floor had been developed and each governed by its own specific plan. In the Phillips Ranch single-family district, a room addition keeps a 25-foot rear yard measured to the property line or to the toe or top of a slope, and a fully roofed patio cover needs a 5-foot side yard and a 10-foot rear yard. One local condition that shapes the work: The General Plan places Pomona's steep hills in the Ganesha Hills south of the Fairplex and in the Phillips Ranch area, and it confines the city's landslide risk to parts of those same two areas, most of it on designated open space. Slope and soils questions come first for any pool or terrace there.

All of it, including Lincoln Park, Wilton Heights, Hacienda Park and Phillips Ranch. Our crews run every job out of our Cahuenga Pass base in Los Angeles, with our own people on site.

Full backyard transformation: generally $50,000 to $250,000+ across Southern California. What moves it is how much hardscape is involved, whether a pool or outdoor kitchen is included, grading and retaining, and the level of lighting and planting. We give line-item pricing after seeing the site rather than quoting a number over the phone.

A patio and turf refresh often finishes in three to five weeks. A full transformation with hardscape, an outdoor kitchen, structures and lighting typically runs ten to sixteen weeks, and longer if a pool is part of the same phase.

Pavers cost more up front but flex with ground movement instead of cracking, and individual units can be lifted and replaced. Poured concrete is cheaper initially, but a crack means cutting out and repouring a section that rarely matches. On most Southern California soil we recommend pavers for anything you will look at every day.

Yes, and on most projects we insist on it. Correcting grade and adding proper drainage while the yard is already open is far cheaper than retrofitting it after new hardscape is down.

Yes. Design, permits, hardscape, structures, kitchen, lighting and planting run through one team and one project manager, so nothing gets lost between trades.