PIERCE
LAND
CLEARING
Cibolo takes its name from the creek, and the creek is the clue. This is clay bottom country where water already wants to collect, which is most of the battle in pond building.
Usually yes. Cibolo sits on the southern end of the Blackland Prairie either side of the creek, and the clay in that ground compacts into its own seal.
The land either side of Cibolo Creek is prairie clay with alluvial soil worked into it, and both are on your side when it comes to holding water. Cut and compacted as the basin is dug, that clay seals itself. No liner, no bentonite, and the chart prices stand with very little added.
It also means the ground tells you where the pond wants to go. Water has been collecting in the same low places on your property for a very long time, and a good site walk mostly consists of paying attention to that rather than arguing with it.
The flip side of creek bottom ground is that some of it carries real water in a big rain. A pond built in the flow path silts up fast, and it takes a beating every time the creek comes up. That is a siting problem rather than a soil problem, and it is fixable if it is spotted first.
So part of the walk is working out where the water goes when it is not being polite. Often the answer is to sit the pond just off the main path so it catches runoff without taking the full force, which costs nothing extra if you decide it before the machine arrives.
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, work out where the creek goes in a big rain, and dig a test pit. On Cibolo clay that pit is usually good news and the siting is the real conversation.
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 properly, so we book around the forecast rather than through it. In creek bottom ground 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 Cibolo a sealing line item is rarely needed. The variables here are getting a machine onto the ground and, if you are near the creek, siting the pond where it catches runoff without sitting in the flow path.
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 Cibolo job: where the pond has to sit relative to the creek and how much freeboard the dam needs, how far a lowboy can get in, whether the bottoms need clearing first, and how far the spoil has to travel.
Real ponds, real day counts, photographed on site.
Lined pond from the air, Manor
A new pond taking on water
Digging on the blacklandFull process, statewide services, and the build standard: our Texas pond construction page.
Cibolo has grown together with Schertz along the corridor, and what is left in acreage tends to sit out toward Marion and Santa Clara or down along the creek. Those are two different jobs. Up on the flats it is pasture and a stock tank. Down in the bottoms it is thicker ground, better clay, and a siting conversation.
The creek bottoms grow mesquite, huisache, hackberry and greenbriar layered up thick, and that is exactly where the pond wants to be. 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 crew and one bill.
The chart starts at six feet at centre and six feet holds on this clay. But this is South Central Texas, with around 32 inches of rain and long hot summers. Eight or nine feet at centre keeps a cold layer at the bottom and is the difference between a pond in August and a warm green puddle.
Cibolo Creek can come up hard and fast, and any pond in this watershed has to be built for that. Spillway cut to grade, dam built wide, and freeboard that accounts for the worst afternoon rather than the average one. None of it shows once the water is in and all of it decides whether the pond survives.
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.
Every pond starts filling in the day it is finished, and bottom ground moves more sediment than most. Grass cover on the watershed, stock fenced off the approach and a small forebay ahead of the main basin will buy you decades.
If cattle drink from it, keep them off the dam. Hoof traffic on a dam face is the commonest way a sound pond becomes a leaking one. A fenced pond with a gravity trough below outlasts an open one by years.
South of Austin the summers run long. Six feet gets low, warm and green by August. Nine feet keeps a cold layer at the bottom and comes through it. Everyone we know who went deeper is glad they did.
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 bottom ground washes hardest. We seed and mat the disturbed ground with a mix suited to South Central Texas so the first storm does not put your dam back into the basin.
Moving water stays cleaner through a long hot summer. An aerator or fountain keeps oxygen through the whole column and holds algae back.
A dock or a hardened approach turns a pond into somewhere you go. 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.
I highly recommend Pierce Land Clearing. They have the right equipment and professionals with skills required to make your property look wonderful.
Reggie, Google review
We cannot say enough good about the incredible service we received. We have 30 acres we are preparing for our future home that has never been lived on or maintained. Bobby listened to our vision.
Stephanie Cantrell, Google review
I had such a great experience with this team. Not only did they do a marvelous job but they are good people. Taylor is very personable, honest, with an amazing work ethic. His team is hardworking.
Dean Volkman, Google review
The site walk comes with vocabulary. Here is what the crew means when they say it.
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 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.
We build ponds across Guadalupe County and the country either side of it. A few of the places we work close to Cibolo:
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. On this clay those numbers usually stand, because sealing is rarely needed. Access and clearing are the more common variables.
Usually. The ground either side of the creek is prairie clay with alluvial soil in it, and that compacts into its own seal as the basin is cut. We dig a test pit before quoting anyway, because the ground gives a better answer than a soil survey.
It changes the siting more than the price. A pond built in the flow path silts up quickly and takes a beating every time the creek comes up. We walk it and usually site the pond just off the main path so it still catches runoff without taking the full force.
Usually, especially in the bottoms. Mesquite, huisache and greenbriar layer up thick down there and that is where the pond wants to be. Clearing is our main trade, so it happens on the same trip as the dig and on one bill.
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, which around here is a real question rather than a theoretical one, or if it sits in a floodplain. We will tell you what applies before anything starts.
Six feet at centre is the chart minimum and it holds on this ground. Eight or nine is the sensible target this far south, where the summers are long and the rain is thinner than Austin gets. The extra depth is cheap while the machine is already in the hole.
Around 32 inches a year, mostly spring and autumn. A chart sized pond on a decent catchment fills over one or two wet seasons, and a creek bottom site with a good watershed above it will fill faster than that. We size the catchment on the walk.
Yes, and near the creek it is common. Bottom ground moves a lot of water, so the dam and the spillway matter. Rebuilding the dam with a proper key trench, sealing the basin and cutting a proper spillway usually costs less than a new build.
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, check where the creek runs in a big rain, and give you a written number.