PIERCE
LAND
CLEARING
Manor is blackland prairie with a skyline view, and our pond work here is photographed twice over, including the lined build whose aerial sits on this page. Prime clay, honest exceptions, real photos.
Manor sits on the blackland that makes east Travis County the easy side for ponds, and our lined Manor build is the honest footnote that even prime country has exceptions.
Most Manor tracts run deep prairie clay: dig, core, compact, hold. Quarter acre tanks finish in two to three days here, run the published list, and need no additives, which is why east Travis is where we send people who want the simplest possible pond story.
The Manor build photo above is that story in progress.
The aerial on this page shows a Manor pond we built with a liner, because that particular site sat on a sandy lens that no amount of compaction would seal. We found it, said so, and built the version that holds.
That is the whole lesson: even prime counties have exceptions, and testing beats assuming everywhere.
Blackland east of Austin builds fast, honest ponds. Here is the entire process on a Manor build, first text to full pool.
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.
A Manor site walk is blackland work: shovel-test the clay, find the draw the water already uses toward Wilbarger Creek, and size the watershed. The soil out here seals ponds by nature, so the walk concentrates on proportion, where the dam line runs, how deep the center cuts, how the pond fits ground that is turning from farmland to homesteads. You get the whole design and the machine days standing in the field.
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.
Manor catches Austin-grade rain, around 34 inches, and blackland sheds it in sheets. A pond sized to its draw fills on one wet season, sometimes faster. Grass the dam immediately, bare blackland writes gullies in a single storm, watch the spillway work, and expect the level to surprise you on the early side.
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 |
Manor builds usually run the list clean on prairie clay. The documented lined build here is the exception that proves the testing: when a basin will not seal, we say so and price the liner as a line item, before digging.
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.
Blackland keeps the list short: rock hammer time essentially never, bentonite rarely, because the clay seals itself. What appears instead: brush and mesquite clearing at published day rates when the site is grown over, and spoil shaped into pads or berms on the property, which flat eastern Travis County ground usually welcomes.
Real ponds, real day counts, photographed on site.
Pond build on Manor blackland
The lined Manor build, from the air
Pflugerville, 15 min north: the dig
Pflugerville, standing full
Elgin, 15 min east: 5 daysFull process, statewide services, and the build standard: our Texas pond construction page.
Manor is the last place you can watch the Austin skyline from your own tank dam, and the acreage between 290 and the toll roads is selling to people who want exactly that. On this clay the pond goes in fast, fills off the prairie rain, and instantly becomes the reason the porch faces the way it does.
The in-progress build photo shows the rule: blackland digging clean and fast. The lined aerial shows the exception: a sandy lens that testing caught before money was wasted on a basin that would never hold. Between the two photos you can read our whole method, and both jobs are fifteen minutes from wherever you are standing in Manor.
Tracts along Wilbarger Creek and the Colorado bottoms carry mapped floodplain and gorgeous clay in the same acre. Placement just off the line, which we check on every walk, gets you the dirt without the review, and the bottoms watershed fills ponds fast when the prairie storms run.
Eastern Travis County blackland packs and seals the way pond builders wish all ground did. Core trench keyed in clean, dam raised in compacted lifts, basin holding without additives. Builds here run quick and quotes run clean, and the finished pond starts sealing itself tighter with every wet-dry cycle the clay works through.
Manor ground is moving from cotton rows to five-acre homesteads, and a pond is the improvement that makes those acres feel like country instead of a big lawn. Stock water if you run animals, a fishery if you fish, storm water storage either way, and the one view upgrade that appreciates. It will outlast every structure that goes up around it.
There is no shade on the blackland and no mercy in August. Eight feet or more at center keeps the water cool and the level honest, and pinches the warm shallows where weeds start. On flat ground the deep center also banks more of the storm water this prairie sheds so freely.
Seed and matting are the build’s last act, and watering that grass in is your first. A few months after the pond holds steady, stock minnows and bluegill, then bass the following season. Fertile blackland water raises fish fast; the order is the only rule it insists on.
Manor sites often start as mesquite rows and overgrown fence lines. We clear them as the Manor clearing crew we already are, grubbed so nothing returns through your banks, keeper trees protected, topsoil saved and dressed back over the finish grades, ready for grass the same month.
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.
Blackland gullies faster than any soil in the region when bare, so the dam is seeded and matted before we call a Manor build done. One season later it mows like a park and sheds storms like armor.
Fertile prairie water grows algae enthusiastically. A bottom diffuser keeps oxygen up and blooms down without chemicals, and a fountain turns the pond into the best thing visible from the porch at dusk.
Docks are cheapest as a plan and priciest as an afterthought. Mention it on the walk and we shape the shelf and approach while the basin is dry, so the pier lands level over honest depth.
Forage first, bass a season later, and Manor’s fertile water does the growing. Three patient years buys an evening fishery ten minutes from Austin that nobody else can launch a boat on.
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
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 that sheds rain toward the pond. On Manor blackland the sheets of storm runoff mean even a modest watershed fills a well-sized basin quickly.
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.
The east Travis ring around Manor, and the crews already in it.
Two photographed on this page: a blackland build in progress and a finished lined pond from the air. The rule and the exception, both local.
Published list: quarter acre from $12,300 at 6 feet on a 4:1 bank, and prairie clay tracts here run it clean in two to three days. The calculator above handles your exact size.
A sandy lens under that particular basin would never have sealed, and the ground said so once it was open. Liners get priced as a line item when, and only when, the basin actually needs one.
This close. Manor tracts fifteen minutes from the tollway carry the same blackland as the deep prairie, and the pond does not know the skyline is watching.
Mapped, checked on the walk, and usually solved by placement a short distance off the line, which keeps the same great bottom clay under the basin.
One mobilization: brush out, pond in, dam grassed. Our crews work east Travis weekly.
Send photos and a rough size. Two documented Manor jobs say the quote will be honest and probably list price.