PIERCE
LAND
CLEARING
Briggs is working Burnet County ranch country on the Lampasas Cut Plain. Flat rocky divides with good clay down in the valleys, and which half of your place the tank sits on decides most of the price.
Often yes, and the answer can change over a couple of hundred yards. This is Cut Plain country: shallow soil over limestone on the flats and rises, with deeper clay collected in the valleys and along the creeks. Picking the right spot matters more here than almost anywhere we work.
Briggs country is not the steep Edwards ground further south. It is broad flat divides with valleys cut between them, and generations of runoff have carried fine material down into those valleys. The clay that will not stay on top of a limestone flat is sitting in the bottom, which is exactly where a tank wants to be anyway.
That means a well sited Briggs tank often seals with its own dirt and costs no more than one built on blackland. It also means a badly sited tank two hundred yards away on the rise can need thousands in bentonite. The site walk is not a formality out here. It is the cheapest decision on the whole job.
Get up out of the valley and the soil goes thin fast. On the divides around Briggs you can be into solid limestone a foot or two down, which is slow digging, expensive digging, and it does not hold water once you are finished. A tank up there is a rock job with a sealing job on top of it.
A test pit sorts it out in an afternoon. If we find rock at shallow depth we will say so, and normally suggest moving down the slope rather than paying twice. If the location is fixed for a reason, the rock work and the sealing go on the quote before you sign rather than turning up with the machine already on site.
Most people have never had a tank 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.
Send photos of the spot, a rough size, and your town. You get a ballpark from the published list the same day, and if it sounds right we set a time to walk the property. No pressure loop, no form-and-wait.
We walk the ground with you, find the bottom the runoff already uses, and dig a test pit to see what is under the topsoil. Around Briggs that pit often decides the location as well as the price, because the good clay and the shallow rock can be a couple of hundred yards apart.
A real number in machine days: what the dig costs, what the dam costs, what happens if we hit rock, and what the clearing adds if the site is brushed up. The price on paper is the price, and any rock contingency is spelled out instead of buried.
A lowboy shows up with the dozer and excavator, usually within a few weeks of a signed quote. We need a gate the iron fits through and a spot for the trailer, and we handle the rest.
Two to five working days for most ponds. Topsoil gets stripped and saved, the core trench gets cut, the dam goes up in compacted lifts, and the basin takes shape a bench at a time. You are welcome on site every day of it, at a safe distance from the swing radius.
Before the machines load, we walk the pond with you: dam, spillway, slopes, and the topsoil dressed back over the banks. If it does not match what was quoted, that is the moment we make it right.
Then you wait on rain. A tank in a Cut Plain bottom catches everything the divide above it sheds, so it tends to come up in jumps after storms rather than steadily. That is also why the spillway gets built for the worst afternoon rather than the average month.
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 Briggs the number is mostly decided by where on the place the tank goes. Down in the valley soil most jobs run at chart price. Up on a rocky divide expect a rock line and a sealing line, and both get written down 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.
No surprise line items. Here is how the number breaks down on every quote we write.
Siting and design against your watershed, staking, topsoil stripped and saved, the core trench, the dam built in compacted lifts, the spillway cut and shaped, slopes finished to mow, and topsoil dressed back over the banks. Machine transport is in the quote, and so is the walkthrough before we leave.
What moves the number on a Briggs job: whether the site is valley soil or shallow rock, how far a lowboy can get in, whether the bottom needs the mesquite taken out first, and how far the spoil has to be carried.
Real ponds, real day counts, photographed on site.
Quarter acre pond cut, Burnet
Pond dirt work, Bertram
Dam graded on limestone ground, LampasasFull process, statewide services, and the build standard: our Texas pond construction page.
Briggs is ranch country that still runs cattle, and nearly everything we build here is water with a job: stock water in a back pasture, a catchment that stops a hay meadow sheeting into the county road, something to draw from in a dry August. The published chart suits that work because it is priced in machine days rather than as a landscape feature.
The bottoms where a tank wants to sit are usually the brushiest ground on a Burnet County place: mesquite and elm down the draw, cedar creeping in off the rise, greenbriar through the fence line. We clear land as our main trade and build ponds with the same crew, so the brush comes out and the basin gets cut on one mobilisation with one transport charge.
On this ground the difference between a cheap tank and an expensive one is usually a couple of hundred yards. We would rather spend an extra hour on the walk with a probe than sell you the pond you asked for in the spot you picked. If the good ground is somewhere else on the place, we will tell you.
Cut Plain country sheds rain hard off the rock and funnels it down the valleys, so a tank in a bottom catches the whole divide above it. The armoured spillway and the freeboard are what stand between a big afternoon and a rebuilt dam. It is the least interesting line on the quote and the one that decides whether the tank is still there in thirty years.
A new tank looks raw. Bare banks, water the colour of the clay it came out of, and a season before it settles. Get grass on the banks before the first big rain and it clears faster and stops feeding silt back into itself.
Every tank starts filling in the day it is finished, and a Cut Plain watershed delivers plenty. Grass cover on the divide above, stock fenced off the approach and a small forebay ahead of the main basin will buy you decades.
Hoof traffic on a dam face is the commonest way a sound tank becomes a leaking one. A fenced tank with a gravity trough below costs a little more up front and outlasts an open one by years.
You find out what a tank 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. Everyone we know who went deeper is glad they did.
The build does not have to stop when the water shows up. These come with the same one-crew, one-call approach as the pond itself.
Bare banks wash, and a Cut Plain storm washes hard. We seed and mat the disturbed ground with a mix suited to Central Texas so the first big rain does not put your dam back into the basin.
Moving water stays cleaner. An aerator keeps oxygen through the whole column and holds algae back through a hot summer, which matters on water that stock are drinking.
A hardened approach keeps stock watering without breaking the banks down, and gives you somewhere to back a trailer. We shape and compact it while the machines are still on site.
Fish want structure and depth before stocking. We leave brush piles, a drop off and a shelf while the basin is open, so the tank is built to hold fish before you put any in.
Taylor was very professional from start to finish. Great to deal with and on time. Equipment was top notch. We had a few challenges to overcome and he tackled them head on instead of backing away. Only company I will call for future land clearing needs.
Patrick Dean, Google review
Contracted Pierce to clear 5 acres of land. They did quick, quality, and outstanding work removing all the requested trees and preserving the oaks. Definitely recommend!
Trevor Seret, Google review
Pierce Land Clearing surpassed our expectations. The work was accurate and mindful of the trees that we wanted to keep. Bobby was very professional, polite, and skillful. Would 100 percent recommend.
olivia gutierrez, Google review
Six terms you will hear on the site walk, and what they actually mean for your water.
A keyway cut below grade under the dam and packed with clay, so water cannot travel beneath the structure.
The dam built up in thin layers, each packed tight by the machine before the next goes on. The opposite of a pushed up pile.
The armored low route storm water takes around the dam instead of over it. The difference between a rain event and a rebuild.
Four feet of run for every foot of drop. Gentler banks are safer and easier to mow; steeper banks get more depth from less dirt.
The dry dam height above full pool, the safety margin that keeps a big storm inside the pond.
Every acre of ground that sheds rain toward your tank. On the Cut Plain the divide above a valley bottom can be a lot of acres of thin soil over rock that sheds nearly everything it catches, so the watershed here fills a tank fast and tests the spillway hard.
We build ponds across Burnet County and the ranch country either side of 183. A few of the places we work near Briggs:
Pricing 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. Around Briggs the site decides the rest. Valley ground usually runs at chart price, and a rocky divide adds rock work and sealing, both written on the quote before you sign.
In the valleys, usually yes, because the clay has collected there. Up on the limestone flats, usually not without help. That is why we dig a test pit rather than read a soil map. It gives a straight answer in an afternoon.
We will tell you before you sign. Most of the time there is better ground within a few hundred yards, and moving is far cheaper than cutting rock and then sealing it. If the location has to be where it is, we price the rock and the bentonite up front.
Often. The bottoms are where the mesquite and cedar are thickest. Doing the clearing and the dig with one crew on one trip saves you a second mobilisation and a second transport charge.
On your own rural land, generally no, and agricultural water storage is exempt from most regulation in Texas. It changes if the tank dams a defined watercourse or sits in a floodplain. We will tell you which applies before anything starts.
Six feet at centre is where the chart starts, and six will do for stock water in a normal year. Eight or nine is what we recommend if the tank has to still be worth something in a third dry summer. In valley soil that extra depth is easy digging while the machine is already there.
Burnet County averages about 32 inches a year, mostly spring and autumn. A tank sitting in a valley bottom catches everything the divide above it sheds, so a decent watershed fills a chart sized tank over one or two wet seasons.
Yes, and there are plenty around Briggs worth saving. Rebuilding the dam with a proper key trench and cutting a spillway sized for the catchment usually costs less than a new build, on ground that has already proved it holds water.
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 tell you honestly whether that is the right spot before we quote it.