PIERCE
LAND
CLEARING
Pads, ranch roads, cut and fill and pond work across Burnet County. The seam where granite meets limestone, and the two do not dig the same.
Burnet County sits on the boundary of the Llano Uplift, which means it has both kinds of rock and they are not interchangeable. West and south toward Llano it goes granite. North and east it is limestone under thin soil like the rest of the Hill Country. Knowing which one is under a given tract is the first thing that has to happen, because the machine and the method change with it.
Limestone can often be milled or broken to grade and reused as base. Granite generally cannot, and where it runs shallow the design works around it instead. Same county, same acreage, completely different job, which is why we open the ground rather than price off a map.
Burnet County holds water well in the right spots and not at all in the wrong ones. Pockets of clay in the draws are what make a tank work here, and finding them is a test pit question. We have built ponds across this county and we will tell you honestly whether your site is one of the good ones.
The full menu from our excavation and dirt work page, priced and planned for Burnet ground.
Cut and fill is the whole job on most sites around Burnet. Material comes off the high side, goes onto the low side, and gets compacted as it goes rather than pushed into place and hoped over. Balancing a site so nothing has to be hauled in or out is the cheapest version of this work, and where the ground allows it we will tell you.
Grading is what separates a site that drains from one that ponds. We shape positive fall away from every structure, tie it into somewhere the water can actually go, and finish to a surface that reads as landform rather than machine tracks. On burnet county getting this wrong shows up the first wet season.
A pad is only as good as what is under it. Subgrade gets prepared, fill goes in compacted lifts to a spec, and the finished elevation is set against the drainage plan rather than the existing dirt. Barn pads, shop pads and house pads around Burnet all get built the same way because the failure mode is the same.
Site prep is where our clearing side and our dirt side meet. Trees down, stumps and root balls out of the building footprint, ground cut to rough grade and handed to a builder ready for survey and permit. Doing both halves with one crew is faster and there is nobody to blame in the middle.
Ranch roads and driveways get built to survive rain, not just to look right on the day. Crown for shedding water, base rock spread and compacted to a real depth, and crossings where the water already wants to run. A road built without those three costs more in the second year than it saved in the first.
Ponds and stock tanks are dirt work with a water problem attached. The dam gets keyed into undisturbed ground and built in compacted lifts, the basin gets cut to depth, and the spillway goes in at the right elevation. Around Burnet we will tell you honestly whether your ground will hold water before you commit.
We price the way ranchers think: what iron, how many days, what it costs to get it there. Everything else is a named line item you saw coming. The same published day-rate logic runs our clearing, pond, and dirt quotes, which keeps everybody honest. Send photos to 512-400-2693 for the ballpark today.
Around Burnet the number depends on which rock you are on and how much usable material is already on the property. Limestone that mills into base saves money. Granite at the surface changes the design. Ranch access to the back of a place is the third factor.
Send photos and your town, get an honest range the same day. No pressure funnel, no waiting week for a callback.
We find what the ground is hiding, rock, water, soft spots, before it can find your budget. The design happens here, in person.
Machine days on paper: dig, fill, grade, transport, contingencies. You can check the logic against our published rates.
Usually a few weeks out from signing. We need a gate the iron fits through and a place for the trailer, and we handle the rest.
Watch the ground change daily from outside the swing radius. Topsoil saved, fills compacted, grades cut to move water.
A slow lap around the finished work together, against the quote. Fixed on the spot if anything misses. Then it is yours.
A pond is a dirt job with a water problem attached, and it is the same crew, the same machines and the same compaction standard as a building pad. The difference is that a pad fails slowly and a dam fails all at once.
Everything that matters happens in the dam. It gets keyed in so water cannot slide underneath it, built in compacted lifts rather than pushed up in one pass, and given a bank shallow enough to mow. Ponds almost never fail in the middle. They fail at the dam.
The spillway is the other half. Somewhere for overflow to go that is not across the dam, cut into undisturbed ground at the right elevation.
Around Burnet that question gets answered with test pits, not optimism. If the ground will not hold water on its own we will say so and price the fix, whether that is a clay core, imported select fill or a sealed basin.
Depth beats width every time. Six feet at center is the baseline we build to, and it is why our pond pricing is quoted that way.
Real projects with full write-ups and photos. Every card opens the project page.
Every number on a dirt job comes back to what is under the surface, and the only honest way to know is to open the ground. We dig test holes on the site walk. It costs an hour and it is the difference between a quote you can rely on and a change order later.
Fill placed in one lift and tracked over looks identical to fill placed in compacted lifts, right up until something is built on it. We build to a spec and we are happy to have it tested. The pads that fail in Texas nearly all failed at this step.
Most dirt work that goes wrong went wrong because of water, not dirt. Where it comes from, where it sits and where it leaves are questions we answer before the first cut around Burnet, because retrofitting drainage after concrete is the expensive way to learn it.
We clear the trees and we move the dirt, which means the stumps come out of the pad footprint properly instead of being someone else problem. On a site that needs both, that is usually days off the schedule and one less contractor to coordinate.
They did exactly what we agreed on. Rare these days. Dustin showed up early and did a nice job. Great to work with.
Miles Garwood, Google review
Great company with equipment to handle any size job!
Reed Brown, Google review
I highly recommend Pierce Land Clearing. Jonathan was my operator and was very efficient and didn't waste any time clearing my project. He listened to what I wanted done and got to work. I will use this company again.
John Paul Michna, Google review
Priced by the machine day rather than by guesswork. Dozer and excavator work is $3,000 per day plus transport, with a one day minimum on every machine. What sets your number is how much material moves, whether fill has to be imported, and whether you are on granite or limestone and how much material is already on site. Send photos and we will give you a real figure.
Yes, and it is usually cheaper to have one outfit do both. Trees down, stumps and root balls out of the building footprint, then straight into cut and fill with the same crew. On a site that needs clearing and dirt work, splitting it across two contractors adds days and a blame line in the middle.
Yes. Bring the plan set and we build to it, including compaction spec and finished elevations. If the plan and the ground disagree, which happens in Burnet County more than people expect, we will flag it before we start rather than build something that has to be redone.
It gets planned for, not discovered. The site walk includes probing, and the quote carries a written contingency for ripping or hammering, billed by the day. The difference between outfits shows up at the first hard bucket, and ours is in writing.
We build pads in moisture-conditioned compacted lifts to plan elevations. If your engineer requires density testing we build to the spec and support the schedule, and if there is no engineer we build like there was one.
Yes, that is the operation: clearing, grubbing, excavation, grading, and pads under one plan and one invoice. The gaps between contractors are where budgets die, so we removed the gaps.
Photos and a rough scope get a same-day ballpark. A site walk gets a written number in machine days that does not move after you sign.
