Backyard & Outdoor Living in San Dimas

City of San Dimas Community Development Department, Building and Safety Division. Under Municipal Code Chapter 18.12, no building or structure may be built, altered or enlarged until its development plan has been reviewed and approved. Planning Division staff approve pools and spas (with or without retaining walls), ADUs and junior ADUs, and one-story additions designed to match the existing house; new homes, additions of more than one story, and patios, gazebos or ground-level decks that use cantilevers or retaining walls and are visible from a public right-of-way go to the Director of Community Development. The Director can send a staff-level project to a higher level of review when it could be incompatible with, or adversely affect, surrounding property. In the SF-H Single-Family Hillside Zone, a development plan must be approved before any grading or building, and grading or building permit applications there must include site plans, conceptual house elevations and grading plans. We prepare the drawings, make the submittal and handle plan-check corrections ourselves, so you are not the one chasing plan check.

Residential lots here fall under zones with very different rules. The SF-A agriculture zone permits horses on lots of 16,000 square feet or more, while in the SF-H hillside zone new subdivisions need at least 25,000 square feet of net lot area where the average slope is under 20 percent and a full acre at 20 percent or steeper, with a 140-foot minimum lot width and lot coverage capped at 35 percent. One local condition that shapes the work: CAL FIRE's Local Responsibility Area map dated March 24, 2025 places much of the Northern Foothills, including the canyon terrain around Horsethief Canyon Park and the San Dimas Canyon Nature Center, in a Very High Fire Hazard Severity Zone, and the southern hills around Via Verde and Bonelli Park carry a mix of Very High, High and Moderate designations, while the level ground around downtown sits largely outside the mapped zones.

All of it, including Via Verde, Northern Foothills and Downtown San Dimas. 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.