Concrete Foundation Contractor for Riverside & San Diego Counties

Precision Set-Up Concrete (PSU Concrete) has been building custom concrete foundations for over 30 years. Our management team brings 100+ years of combined experience. Foundations are not a sideline for us — they are the core of the business, from single-family custom homes and ADUs to horse barns, winery slabs, and small-to-medium commercial pads across Riverside County and San Diego County.

Send us your plans and we will send you a bid that covers the whole foundation. Call (800) 294-2207 or request a free bid.

Your concrete foundation sets what every trade after it has to work with

Concrete is different from every other product in your project, because it is not easily or inexpensively changed once it is set and finished. A wall that is framed an inch out of square gets fixed with a saw. A foundation that is out of square gets fixed by every trade that follows it — framing, trusses, cabinets, flooring, garage doors, tile — and each of those fixes shows up as an extra on somebody’s invoice.

That is the real problem with an incomplete foundation bid. The number on page one looks good; the number you actually pay arrives in pieces over the next eight months, from contractors who did not create the problem and are not going to eat it. We build the foundation accurately the first time so the trades behind us can do their work at the price they quoted you.

Concrete foundation types we build

Slab on grade foundations

A slab on grade foundation is a single flat concrete pour with no steps and no stem walls, poured on prepared ground with thickened footings at the perimeter and under bearing points. It is the most common residential foundation type in Southern California and, on a level pad, it is usually the fastest and most economical way to get a house out of the ground. See our slab on grade foundation page for how the schedule works.

Raised and stem wall foundations

Raised foundations sit the floor structure above grade on continuous footings and stem walls, with a crawl space underneath. They are the answer when the plan calls for a wood floor system, when utilities need to stay accessible, or when the pad has grade change that a flat slab cannot absorb. Stem wall work is slower and more form-intensive than a flat slab, and any contractor who bids it at slab-on-grade speed is telling you something about how it will be built.

Stepped and hillside foundations

Sloped lots — the kind you find all over La Cresta, Tenaja, Temecula Wine Country, Fallbrook, and Valley Center — usually need a foundation that steps down the grade in sections, with deepened footings and retained edges where the plan calls for them. Foundations with walls and steps take more time than a flat slab, and the honest way to bid one is to price the actual complexity instead of quoting a flat-slab number and issuing change orders later.

ADU and guest house foundations

Accessory dwelling units are a large share of new residential concrete work in Riverside and San Diego counties. An ADU foundation is a small foundation with all the requirements of a big one: engineered plans, a soils report, rebar and anchor placement to spec, and its own inspection sequence. We pour detached ADU slabs, garage conversions that need new footings, and junior ADU work tied into an existing structure.

Commercial foundations

In addition to large residential projects, we take on small to medium commercial work — pads, footings, and slabs for buildings, equipment, and agricultural and equestrian facilities. Placement capacity is up to 20,000 square feet per day. In Riverside County we have placed a 10,000 square foot foundation in a single day. Our project gallery shows the type and scale of commercial work we handle.

Bid from your plans

The oldest trick in foundation bidding is an incomplete takeoff. The contractor leaves out pump time, leaves out extra dirt work, leaves out a hold-down package, wins the job, and then bills all of it back to you as “not included in the original proposal.”

We bid from your plans. The bid covers the foundation scope on those drawings — labor, materials, equipment, forming, rebar, and the pour. You get a change order from us in two situations: you change the work, or the grade does not match the plan we bid from. That is it. If the pad you hand us is the pad on the drawing and the drawing does not change, the bid does not change.

How we build a concrete foundation, step by step

1. Plan review and bid. We take off the foundation from your structural plans, ask about anything ambiguous before we bid, and return a bid that covers the scope on the drawings.
2. Layout. We set the building lines to the site plan and confirm the pad is at the grade the drawings assume. This is the point where a grade problem is cheap to solve.
3. Excavation and trenching. Footings and grade beams are dug to the depths and widths on the structural sheet.
4. Forms. Perimeter forms, interior forms, steps, and stem walls are set and braced square, flat, and to dimension.
5. Rebar, anchor bolts, and hold-downs. Reinforcing steel is placed, tied, and supported to the engineer’s spec, with anchor bolts and hold-downs located from the framing plan — not eyeballed after the pour.

Underground coordination. Plumbing and electrical underground, moisture barrier, and any subslab work are coordinated so nothing gets buried out of sequence.

Pre-pour inspection. The building inspector signs off on steel, forms, and embeds before any concrete is placed. We build to pass on the first visit.

The pour. Concrete is placed, consolidated, and finished to the specified strength and finish.

Cure, strip, and clean. The slab cures, forms come off, the site gets cleaned up, and the framer walks onto a foundation that is ready to build on.

Square and flat is the standard, not the goal

“Square” is the accuracy of the outside dimension. “Flat” is the flatness of the slab itself. Every trade behind the foundation depends on both. Require any foundation contractor you are considering — including us — to guarantee the accuracy of the work in writing and to fix any problems they create for the trades that follow. The answer you get will tell you a lot.

We also build with the materials the engineer specified. The type, strength, and design of the concrete and rebar on your plans exist for structural reasons, and substituting down is invisible on inspection day and permanent afterward.

Licensed, insured, and easy to verify

California law requires a contractor doing concrete work to hold a C-8 (Concrete) classification. Precision Set-Up Concrete holds CA Contractor License #963015, active, with the C-8 classification, and we carry general liability and workers’ compensation coverage on our employees. You can verify all of it — license status, classification, and workers’ comp — at cslb.ca.gov. Do it for us and for every other bidder.

Want a straight checklist for vetting foundation contractors? Read 7 steps to a foundation that a concrete contractor would build his own home on.

Where we pour concrete foundations

We work throughout Riverside County and San Diego County, including Temecula, Murrieta, Wildomar, Menifee, Lake Elsinore, Hemet, Winchester, French Valley, Corona, Riverside, La Cresta, Tenaja, Escondido, San Marcos, Vista, Carlsbad.

Oceanside, Fallbrook, Bonsall, Pala, Valley Center, and Rancho Santa Fe.

Concrete foundation questions we get asked

What does a concrete foundation bid from PSU Concrete include? Everything required to complete the foundation scope on your plans — labor, materials, equipment, forming, rebar, and the pour. We bid from the drawings. You get a change order only if you change the work or the grade does not match the plan.

What type of foundation does my house need? Your structural engineer decides that, based on the soils report and the design of the structure. We build what the approved plans call for, and we will tell you before the pour if something on the drawings will not build the way it is drawn.

Who pulls the permit and calls the inspections? The owner or general contractor always pulls the building permit. Precision Set-Up Concrete never pulls building permits and is never listed on the permit. We build to the permitted plans and coordinate our schedule around the pre-pour inspection.

See our guides to Riverside County building permits and San Diego County building permits.

Do you work with owner-builders, or only general contractors? Both. Send the structural plans (and soils report). We bid from the drawings and will tell you plainly whether the job is a fit — no published hard restrictions or minimum-project rules on this page.

Get a bid on your foundation

Send your plans and we will bid the whole foundation scope on the drawings.

Call (800) 294-2207 · info@psuconcrete.com · Monday–Friday, 7:00 a.m.–5:00 p.m. Request a Free Bid