PIERCE
LAND
CLEARING
Kyle sits on the corridor where the Hill Country runs out into the blackland. Which side of that line your acreage is on decides whether a pond here is a straightforward dig or a conversation about sealing.
East of the interstate, usually yes without much fuss. West of it, on the limestone side, it is a question the test pit answers rather than a soil map.
East of the interstate, out toward Uhland and Niederwald and on down to Lockhart, Kyle sits on prairie clay. That clay compacts into its own seal as the basin is cut, so no liner, no bentonite, and the chart prices hold up with very little added.
If your acreage is on that side, a pond here is about as simple as pond building gets in Central Texas. The main thing to manage is timing, because the same clay that seals your pond is unworkable when it is wet.
Toward Driftwood and the western half of Hays County the Edwards limestone sits close to grade under thin soil. Rock does not seal, and a basin cut into fractured limestone can lose water as fast as it collects it.
So we dig a test pit before quoting rather than after. If there is workable clay somewhere on your property we can win it and cap the basin. If there is not, the honest answer is a liner or a different site, and you will hear that before you have spent anything.
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 the Kyle corridor that pit matters more than anything else, because the ground can change from clay to rock inside one property.
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. That is the frustrating part and it is what decides whether the dam holds.
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. East of Kyle a sealing line item is rarely needed. West of it the test pit decides whether the basin can be capped with clay from your own property or whether a liner is the honest answer, and you see the number before committing.
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 Kyle job: whether the test pit finds workable clay or limestone, whether the basin needs a clay cap or a liner, how far a lowboy can get in, whether the site needs clearing first, and how far the spoil has to travel.
Real ponds, real day counts, photographed on site.
Digging on the blackland
Basin shaping, Gatesville
Finished and full, Liberty HillFull process, statewide services, and the build standard: our Texas pond construction page.
Kyle has grown as fast as anywhere in Texas, and what is left in acreage tends to be held deliberately. The people who call us are usually protecting a few acres from the subdivisions rather than farming it. A pond is the improvement that makes that decision look right: it is useful, it is permanent, and it is the thing everybody walks down to look at.
A pond site is nearly always the brushiest corner of a place, because low ground grows brush and cedar fills anything unmowed. We clear land for a living and build ponds with the same crew, so the clearing and the dig are one mobilisation with one bill instead of two contractors and two transport charges.
On the corridor a price given over the phone is a guess, because the ground can change inside one property line. We dig before we quote. That single hole tells us whether the basin seals itself, whether we can win clay on site to cap it, or whether the rock means moving the pond. It costs you nothing.
This is flash flood country and the Blanco and the Plum Creek watersheds both prove it regularly. A pond here needs a spillway cut to grade and a dam built wide enough it cannot be overtopped. That work is invisible once the water is in, and it is what decides whether the pond survives a wet decade.
A new pond looks raw. Bare banks, cloudy water and 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 begins filling in the day it is finished. Grass cover on the watershed, stock fenced off the approach, and a small forebay to catch sediment 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.
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.
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. We seed and mat the disturbed ground with a mix suited to Central Texas so the first storm does not put your dam back into the basin.
Moving water stays cleaner. An aerator or fountain keeps oxygen through the column and holds algae back through a hot Kyle summer.
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.
Outstanding company. Cleared out around 9 acres of mesquites and prickly pears and some broken down oak trees. The operators are very good at what they do and very courteous. I have some more projects coming up and for sure I know who to call.
ROBERT CARRASCO, Google review
I am so glad I found them to help me clear our land. We were tired of paying thousands of dollars to rent wood chippers, tractors, shredders, and chain saws, and still not being done with the project.
Charles Town, Google review
We were extremely pleased with the results on the land clearing that was done to our property. I had called around to several other companies for bids and PLC was the most reasonable, responsive, and customer oriented.
A Arevalo, Google review
The site walk comes with vocabulary. Here is what the crew means when they say it.
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.
Saving the living top layer before the dig and dressing it back over the banks after, so grass takes the first season.
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. East of the interstate those numbers usually stand. West of it, if the test pit finds rock, sealing or a liner is a genuine added cost that you will see itemised first.
East of the interstate almost always, because you are on prairie clay that seals as it is compacted. West of town, on shallow limestone, sometimes only with a clay cap or a liner. The test pit gives the honest answer and we dig it before quoting.
We stop and tell you, then price the options. Cap the basin with clay won elsewhere on the property, shift the pond to better ground, or line it. We will not dig a hole that cannot hold water and then hand you the bill.
Usually some of it. Low ground grows brush and cedar takes whatever is not mowed, and that is exactly where the pond wants to go. Because clearing is our main trade it happens on the same trip as the dig, 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, sits in a floodplain, or falls inside the Kyle city limit as part of a development. We will tell you which applies first.
Six feet at centre is where the chart starts and it holds water. Eight or more is what we recommend if the pond needs to survive a dry summer looking like a pond rather than a puddle. On the rocky side, depth is limited by what the limestone allows, which the test pit tells us.
About 34 inches a year here, mostly spring and autumn. A chart sized pond on a reasonable catchment fills over one or two wet seasons. We size the watershed on the walk so the answer is about your ground rather than a regional average.
Yes, and on older Kyle places it is often the better job. Widening the basin, rebuilding the dam with a proper key trench and cutting a spillway sized for the catchment usually costs less than a new build and behaves like new afterwards.
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 with the transport already in it.