Backyard & Outdoor Living in West Covina

City of West Covina Community Development Department, Building Division. Building permits come from the Building Division of the Community Development Department, which takes applications, plans and supporting documents through its One Stop Building Permit Center portal. Grading needs its own permit from the City Engineer, and that permit does not cover retaining walls, which carry separate permits and fees. Municipal Code Section 26-46 sets pools and spas at least five feet from interior side and rear property lines, measured to the back of the bond beam, and keeps pool equipment five feet from side and rear lines, out of the front yard and screened from public right-of-way views. ADUs that meet the code's standards are approved ministerially, without a public hearing, through a Second Unit Review, and still need a building permit. We prepare the drawings, make the submittal and handle plan-check corrections ourselves, so you are not the one chasing plan check.

The zoning code sets single-family minimum lot areas from 6,000 square feet under the R-1-6,000 designation up to 40,000 square feet under R-1-40,000, and caps total building coverage and floor area on a sliding scale tied to lot size. The Hillside Overlay, which the General Plan places in the San Jose Hills on the city's southeast side and describes as mostly developed, allows one home per gross acre. Subdivisions generally along Hillside Drive in the 1970s and 1980s used its density transfer, clustering homes on lots of at least 20,000 square feet and creating city-owned Landscape Maintenance District open space, generally steep slopes and valleys, that totals 207 acres in the San Jose Hills. One local condition that shapes the work: In the Hillside Overlay, Section 26-59 requires any substantial area of slope steeper than 45 percent to stay essentially natural and ungraded and calls for minimal grading above 35 percent wherever possible. Lots there with graded pads must keep a substantially flat strip at least ten feet deep between the back of the house and the slope for pedestrian and emergency access, where a one-story open patio cover is allowed.

All of it, including South Hills and Woodside Village. 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.