Local Conditions
What actually shortens joint life in Rancho Cucamonga.
Up against the hills you get two seasons of soil movement rather than one. Winter rain swells the ground, summer dries it back out, and a deck sitting on that cycle rises and falls a little every year. Add the hard water most of these neighbourhoods are on, which leaves mineral deposits along the joint and in the coping, and you have a bead being worked mechanically and fouled chemically at the same time. We see it across Rancho Cucamonga in the same order every time. The bead loses its give first, then it splits, then it lets go of one wall. Around Alta Loma, Etiwanda, Victoria Gardens and Deer Canyon the pools are close enough in age that a whole street tends to reach that point within a season or two of each other.



