PIERCE
LAND
CLEARING
Cedar Park is limestone country with thin soil over it. Ponds are absolutely buildable here, but the honest version starts with a test pit rather than a price over the phone.
Not on its own, usually. Cedar Park sits west of the Balcones escarpment on Edwards limestone, and rock does not seal. What decides your build is whether there is clay on your property we can use.
Cedar Park sits on Edwards limestone with a thin skin of soil over it. Limestone is fractured and porous, and a basin cut straight into it can drain as fast as it fills. That is not a workmanship problem, it is geology, and no amount of compacting fixes it.
This is the part a lot of pond quotes leave out until the machines are already on your property. We would rather say it on the first visit: on this ground, sealing is usually part of the job, and the test pit tells us how much of one you need.
The cheap answer is clay. Many Cedar Park properties have a pocket of workable clay somewhere, often in a low draw, and if we can win enough of it we haul it to the basin and pack it into a cap. That gets you a natural looking pond at a sensible price.
Where there is no clay, a liner is the honest route. It costs more, it works, and it is a known number rather than a hope. What we will not do is dig a pretty basin, take your money, and let you find out over the next dry month that it does not hold.
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.
The first step costs nothing: photos, a rough size, your location. We come back same day with a range from the published list, and the site walk gets scheduled only if that range makes sense to you.
We walk the ground with you, find where water already collects, and dig a test pit. On Cedar Park limestone that pit is the entire basis of the quote: it tells us how deep the soil goes and whether there is clay we can use.
We put the whole build on paper in machine days, dig, dam, and spillway, with rock or liner contingencies called out up front where you can see them. The number you sign is the number you pay.
Once the quote is signed we get you on the calendar, typically a few weeks out. The machines arrive together, stage near the site, and stay until the job is finished, no disappearing mid-build.
Count on two to five working days of iron time for a typical pond. Every build follows the same discipline: saved topsoil, a real core trench, a dam raised in compacted lifts, and slopes cut so they can be mowed, not just admired.
Last step: a slow lap around the pond together. You check the dam, the spillway cut, the slope finish, and the dressed topsoil against the quote. We load the machines only when you are satisfied.
Then you wait on weather. Clay has to be worked dry to compact into a proper seal, so we book around the forecast rather than through it. On a sealed basin that discipline matters even more than usual.
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 Cedar Park you should expect the quote to address sealing, because the limestone will not do it for you. If we can win clay on your property to cap the basin, that is the cheap route. If not, a liner is the honest one. Both get priced 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.
The quote has two halves: what every build includes, and the site-specific items we flag before work starts.
One price, one finished pond: siting matched to the water the land actually sheds, staking, saved topsoil, core trench, a dam packed up in lifts, a proper spillway, slopes you can mow, and banks dressed to grass. Machine transport and the walkthrough are never extras.
What moves the number on a Cedar Park job: whether the basin needs a clay cap or a liner, how much clay we can win on your own property, how far a lowboy can get in, how much cedar has to come out first, and whether the spillway needs armouring.
Real ponds, real day counts, photographed on site.
Banks graded to mow, Liberty Hill
Pond dirt work, Bertram
Basin shaping, GatesvilleFull process, statewide services, and the build standard: our Texas pond construction page.
Very little of what we build around Cedar Park is a working stock tank. These are properties where the pond is the view from the back of the house, somewhere to put a dock, somewhere the grandchildren fish. That changes the brief. Clarity, bank shape and depth matter more than raw acreage, and it is worth designing for them at the start rather than trying to add them later.
Ashe juniper takes anything unmowed on this side of the county, and the low ground where a pond wants to go is exactly what nobody mows. 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 with one bill.
On limestone a phone quote is close to meaningless. That one test pit tells us how deep the soil goes, whether there is clay we can win and use, and whether the rock underneath is solid or shot through with fractures. It costs you nothing, it takes an hour, and it turns a hopeful number into a real one.
Hill Country ground sheds rain fast, and a pond here catches everything above it in a hurry. The spillway gets cut to grade and the dam gets built wide enough it cannot be overtopped. On rocky ground the spillway often has to be armoured, because water moving over thin soil finds bare rock quickly.
A new pond looks raw. Bare banks, cloudy water and a season before it settles. Get grass established on the banks 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 chemical. Depth, a shelf, banks that do not slump and aeration do most of the work. On an amenity pond it is worth spending the thought up front.
On a sealed pond the first dry stretch is the real test. A slow steady drop beyond normal evaporation is worth a call. Caught early it is usually a small repair; ignored for a season it turns into 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. Everyone we know who went deeper is glad they did.
Most clients add at least one of these. Planned during the build, they cost less and land better than bolting them on a year later.
Bare banks wash, and thin soil over rock washes fastest of all. We seed and mat the disturbed ground with a mix suited to Central Texas 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 there, 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.
There is nothing I can say to truly express my gratitude for the work completed! Working with Taylor and Stephen was very easy and they made my once overgrown and unworkable land into a beautiful park like setting.
Kenneth Barber, Google review
Amazing service and final product. Hunter, Jonathan and Dustin were the operators for both the tree mulcher and the rock mulcher. Their work completely transformed my property. My only regret is that I did not have it done sooner.
Byron Hairston, Google review
I would highly recommend this company to clear your land. The estimating process was quick, easy and straightforward. Their operator was on time each day and worked all day.
Clay Pritchett, Google review
Dirt crews talk in shorthand. These are the six terms that matter most on a pond build.
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.
Texan for a working pond built to water cattle. Usually smaller, always practical, and built with the same dam discipline.
The key cut through the dam footprint, backfilled with compacted clay, that stops water tracking under the dam. On limestone it is dug down to sound rock and keyed in, which is slower and more important than on clay ground.
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.
We build ponds across the Hill Country side of Williamson and Burnet County. A few of the places we work close to Cedar Park:
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 Cedar Park limestone you should budget for sealing on top of that. How much depends on whether we can win clay from your own ground or whether the basin needs a liner.
Not by itself, in most cases. The Edwards limestone under this town is fractured and will let water through. Ponds here hold because they are sealed properly, either with a clay cap won on site or with a liner. The test pit tells us which, before you commit to anything.
If there is clay on your property we excavate it, haul it to the basin, spread it in lifts and compact each one until you have a continuous impermeable layer across the floor and up the banks. Where there is no usable clay, we install a liner instead. Both are real line items and both are quoted before work starts.
Often, yes. A sealed pond on Hill Country ground is a striking thing and it adds real value to an acreage property here. What matters is going in with the true number rather than the optimistic one, which is why the test pit comes first.
Nearly always. Cedar fills every unmowed acre in this county. Because land 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 or sits inside the Cedar Park city limit as part of a development. We will tell you which applies before anything starts.
Six feet at centre is where the chart starts. Eight or more is better if you want it to survive a dry summer looking like a pond. On limestone the practical limit is whatever the rock allows, and the test pit tells us that before we promise you a depth.
Yes, and around Cedar Park it is a call we get regularly, usually about a pond somebody else built. We drain it, find where it is losing, and either cap the basin properly or line it. It is not glamorous work but it is often cheaper than the original build should have been.
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 to see what is really under the grass, and tell you honestly what it will take.