Trusted Masonry Contractor in Mountain View - Built for Clay Soil

A large share of Mountain View's housing stock was built between the 1940s and the 1970s. Many of those homes still have their original concrete driveways, patios, and walkways - surfaces that are now 50 to 70 years old. The bigger problem is what is under them. Mountain View sits on clay-heavy soils throughout much of the Santa Clara Valley, and clay soil expands when the winter rains arrive and shrinks when the long dry summer sets in. That back-and-forth movement is not dramatic from year to year, but it adds up. Over decades it cracks slabs, heaves walkways, and puts slow pressure on foundations and block walls. A masonry contractor who does not factor soil behavior into their diagnosis is treating the surface without addressing what actually caused the damage.

Mountain View's dry summers are also hard on exterior masonry. Prolonged heat and sun exposure bleaches and dries out mortar joints, causes concrete surfaces to shrink and crack, and makes any existing damage worse before the rains return. Homeowners who notice small cracks in late summer are often looking at damage that has been building since the previous wet season. The City of Mountain View Building and Safety Division requires permits for structural masonry repairs, retaining walls above certain heights, and work that affects drainage - and those inspections are the homeowner's verification that the job was done to code.

Mountain View is a city of about 82,000 people in the heart of the Santa Clara Valley, best known as the home of the Googleplex and a hub for the tech industry on the Peninsula. For homeowners, the city is defined by its neighborhoods of mid-century ranch houses, most of them built between the late 1940s and the 1970s on modest lots between roughly 5,000 and 7,000 square feet. Castro Street runs through the center of the city as its main commercial and social spine, lined with restaurants and shops that locals have gathered around for generations. The city of Mountain View covers a mix of owner-occupied homes and rental properties, with roughly half the housing stock renter-occupied, particularly near the downtown core and along El Camino Real.

The neighborhoods closest to downtown have the oldest housing - smaller lots, more original concrete flatwork, and in some cases original masonry landscaping elements that have not been touched since the 1960s. Areas closer to Shoreline at Mountain View and the bay have more postwar suburban development, with wider lots and larger driveways. Homeowners here tend to invest in their properties, partly because of the high home values and partly because the clay soils make regular maintenance necessary rather than optional. Our team also regularly serves homeowners in East Palo Alto to the north and Sunnyvale to the south, both of which share the same clay soil conditions.