PIERCE
LAND
CLEARING
Bee Cave is limestone with a view. Ponds here are amenity water on estate acreage, and they hold because they are sealed properly rather than because the ground is kind.
Only if it is built for this ground. Bee Cave sits west of the escarpment on Edwards limestone with very little soil over it, which is beautiful country and difficult pond country.
The ground around Bee Cave is Edwards limestone with a thin covering of soil, and in a lot of places barely that. Limestone is fractured and porous. A basin dug into it looks like a pond right up until the water goes somewhere you did not plan.
We would rather have that conversation on the first visit than halfway through a build. The test pit tells us how much soil you have, whether there is clay anywhere on the property worth winning, and how the rock underneath behaves. It is an hour of machine time and it makes the quote real.
Where a Bee Cave property has a draw with workable clay in it, we win that clay, haul it to the basin, spread it in lifts and compact each one into a continuous cap. That gives you a natural looking pond at a sensible number.
Where there is no clay, a liner does the job and does it for decades. It is a larger figure and it is a known one. On estate acreage here that trade tends to make sense, because the pond is the feature the whole property is arranged around.
Most people have never had a pond built and do not know what the week looks like. Here is the whole thing, from the first call to the day it starts holding water.
It starts with photos of the site and a rough idea of size. We answer with a same-day ballpark off the published price list, and if the number works for you, we schedule the site walk. No sales funnel, just a conversation.
We walk the ground with you, find where water already collects, and dig a test pit. On Bee Cave limestone that pit is the basis of everything: soil depth, whether there is clay worth winning, and how the rock behaves.
The quote reads like a plan, not a mystery: dig, dam, spillway, and any contingency for rock, each priced in machine days. If clearing is needed first, it is on the same sheet at our published day rates. What is written is what you pay.
Within a few weeks of signing, the lowboy delivers the iron. All we need from you is gate access wide enough for the machines and somewhere to drop the trailer. Everything else is on us.
Most ponds take two to five working days. The sequence never changes: strip and save the topsoil, cut the core trench, raise the dam in thin compacted lifts, shape the basin. Watch as much of it as you like from outside the swing radius.
The build ends with a walkthrough, not an invoice. Dam, spillway, slopes, and dressed banks, checked against the quote with you standing there. Anything off gets fixed before the lowboy is loaded.
Then you wait on weather. Clay has to be worked dry to compact into a proper seal, and on a capped basin that discipline decides whether you get a pond or a slow leak.
Published, not hidden behind a form. Prices and build times are based on 6 feet of depth at center with a 4:1 bank.
| Pond Size | Starting Price at 6 ft depth, 4:1 bank | Build Time |
|---|---|---|
| 1/4 acre | from $12,300 | 2 to 3 days |
| 1/2 acre | from $19,200 | 3 to 4 days |
| 3/4 acre | from $23,300 | 4 to 5 days |
| 1 acre | from $27,000 | 5 to 6 days |
| 1 1/4 acre | from $30,400 | 6 to 7 days |
| 1 1/2 acre | from $33,800 | 7 to 8 days |
| 1 3/4 acre | from $36,800 | 8 to 9 days |
| 2 acre | from $39,500 | 9 to 10 days |
Prices are based on six feet of depth at centre with a 4:1 bank. Around Bee Cave the quote will address sealing, because limestone will not seal itself. If we can win clay from a draw on your property that is the affordable route; otherwise a liner is the honest one. Both are priced in writing before anything starts.
Size it, tell us what to do with the dirt, then draw the pond right on a photo of your land. Your estimate comes back by email, along with a preview of the finished water.
Every quote we write splits the same honest way. Here is what is inside the number and what gets flagged separately.
Every quote covers the complete pond: watershed-matched siting, staking, saved topsoil, a true core trench, a dam raised in compacted lifts, a shaped spillway, mowable slope finishes, and banks dressed with the topsoil we saved. Transport of the machines is included, as is the final walkthrough.
What moves the number on a Bee Cave job: whether the basin needs a clay cap or a liner, how much usable clay is on your property, how far a lowboy can get up the drive, how much cedar has to come out, and whether the spillway needs armouring on a steep site.
Real ponds, real day counts, photographed on site.
Shaping the basin, Liberty Hill
Pond dirt work, Bertram
Grading the dam, LampasasFull process, statewide services, and the build standard: our Texas pond construction page.
Very little of what we build around Bee Cave is a working stock tank. These are properties where the pond is what the house looks at, where the dock goes, where people swim. That raises the bar on clarity, bank shape and finish, and it means the build should be designed around how you will actually use the water rather than around a price per acre.
Ashe juniper takes every unmowed acre out here, and the low ground where a pond wants to sit is the thickest of it. We clear land as our main trade and build ponds with the same crew, so the cedar comes out and the basin gets cut on one mobilisation, one crew, one bill.
On this ground a phone quote is close to fiction. The pit tells us soil depth, whether there is clay in a draw worth hauling, and whether the rock is sound or fractured. That single hour is what separates a real price from an optimistic one, and it costs you nothing.
Bee Cave country falls away fast, which is why the views are what they are. For a pond that cuts both ways. A good fall gives you a natural dam site and a gravity fed catchment. It also means water arrives at your dam with real energy behind it, so the spillway gets cut to grade and armoured where it needs to be.
A new pond looks raw. Bare banks, cloudy water, a season before it settles. Get grass established before the first big rain and it clears faster and stops feeding silt back into itself.
If you want water you can see into, that starts with the build rather than a bottle of something. Depth, a shelf, banks that do not slump and aeration do most of the work, and on an amenity pond it is worth the thought up front.
On a sealed pond the first dry stretch is the real test. A steady drop beyond normal evaporation is worth a call. Caught early it is usually a small repair; left a season it becomes draining and starting again.
You learn what a pond is worth in the third hot August. Six feet gets low, warm and green. Nine feet keeps a cold layer at the bottom and comes through it looking like water you would still swim in.
A pond is dirt work first, but it does not have to end there. One call covers everything from grass on the dam to fish in the water.
Bare banks wash, and thin soil on a slope washes fastest. We seed and mat the disturbed ground with a mix suited to the Hill Country so the first storm does not undo the shaping.
Moving water stays cleaner, and on an amenity pond that is most of the point. An aerator or fountain keeps oxygen through the column and holds algae back through a hot summer.
A dock or a hardened bank turns a pond into somewhere you use. We shape and compact for one while the machines are still on site, which is far cheaper than bringing them back.
Fish want structure and depth before stocking. We leave brush piles, a drop off and a shelf while the basin is open, so the pond is built to hold fish before you put any in.
Pierce Land Clearing did an amazing job clearing our lot in Liberty Hill. It was wonderful working with them and I would highly recommend them for getting your job done right.
Devandar Reddy, Google review
Cleared lots of cedars for trails for us on our 14 acres. Cannot wait to have them come back with the machine for rock pulverizing on the rock trails.
Heather Wilson, Google review
Great job, turned a jungle into a park at a fair price, done just in time before the rain. Thanks.
Toan Do, Google review
The site walk comes with vocabulary. Here is what the crew means when they say it.
Every acre of ground that sheds rain toward your pond. It, not the hole, decides how fast you get water.
The water level at the bottom of the spillway, the highest the pond is designed to hold day to day.
Where the dam dirt comes from. On a well designed pond it is the basin itself, so every yard dug does double duty.
One acre of water a foot deep, about 326,000 gallons. The unit that decides whether a stock pond needs a state permit.
Saving the living top layer before the dig and dressing it back over the banks after, so grass takes the first season.
Clay you can roll into a ribbon in your hand. The soil that seals a pond, and the first thing we look for on the walk.
We build ponds across western Travis County and the Hill Country beyond it. A few of the places we work close to Bee Cave:
The chart starts at $12,300 for a quarter acre at six feet with a 4:1 bank and runs to $39,500 for two acres, with an $8,000 minimum. On Bee Cave limestone you should budget for sealing on top of that. Whether it is a clay cap or a liner is what the test pit decides.
Not by itself. The limestone under this area is fractured and will take water through it. Ponds here hold because they are sealed, either with a compacted clay cap or a liner. Anyone quoting you a price without digging first is guessing with your money.
If there is clay on your property we excavate it, haul it to the basin, spread it in lifts and compact each one until the floor and banks are a continuous impermeable layer. Where there is none, we install a liner. Both are itemised in the quote before work starts.
Plenty of our Hill Country customers do, and it is much better designed in than added later. That means depth, a shelf to stand on, banks graded so they are not slick, and aeration to keep the water moving. All of it is cheap while the machines are already there.
Nearly always. Cedar fills anything unmowed out here. Because clearing is our main trade, the juniper comes out and the basin gets cut on the same trip with one crew and one bill instead of two contractors.
On your own rural land, generally no, and agricultural water storage is exempt from most regulation in Texas. It changes if the pond dams a defined watercourse, sits in a floodplain, or falls inside the Bee Cave city limit. We will tell you what applies before anything starts.
Six feet at centre is where the chart starts. Eight or more is better if you want clear, cool water through a Hill Country August rather than something warm and green. Depth here is governed by what the rock allows, which the test pit establishes before we promise you anything.
Yes, and around Bee Cave it is a regular call, usually about a basin somebody dug straight into rock. We drain it, find where it is losing, and either cap it properly or line it. It is frequently cheaper than the original build should have been done for.
Tell us roughly how big you want the water and where you are thinking of putting it. We will walk the ground, dig a test pit, and give you a written number that reflects the rock rather than ignoring it.