PIERCE
LAND
CLEARING
We have dug ponds in Pflugerville blackland and watched them fill. Heavy clay holds water without a liner, which is the single biggest thing working in your favour here.
Short answer: yes, and more reliably here than almost anywhere we work. Pflugerville sits on the Blackland Prairie, and the clay under your grass is the reason.
The soil under Pflugerville is deep prairie clay, the same ground that grew cotton out toward Manor and Coupland. Clay of that kind is what a pond wants. Compacted by the machine as the basin is cut and the dam is built, it holds water on its own without a bentonite treatment or a liner.
That matters to the quote more than anything else on this page. On sandy or rocky ground a pond can need sealing work that adds thousands, and it is never certain until somebody digs. Here the default assumption is that your ground will hold, and we confirm it in the test pit rather than hope.
The same clay that seals your pond is miserable to work when it is saturated. It sticks to tracks, it will not compact properly, and it tears ruts that outlast the job. That is not a price problem so much as a calendar one.
We book pond work around the weather rather than through it. If your place is soaked we will tell you to wait, because a dam built out of greasy clay is a dam that leaks. Late summer and early autumn are usually the best windows around Pflugerville.
Most people have never had a pond built and do not know what the week actually looks like. Here is the whole thing, from the first phone call to the day it starts holding water.
Send photos of the spot, a rough size, and your town. You get a ballpark from the published list the same day, and if it sounds right we set a time to walk the property. No pressure loop, no form-and-wait.
We walk the ground with you, find the low spot the water already wants to go to, and dig a test pit to see what is under the grass. On Pflugerville blackland that pit is usually good news, and it is where the quote stops being a guess.
A real number in machine days: what the dig costs, what the dam costs, what happens if we hit rock, and what the clearing adds if the site is brushed up. The price on paper is the price, and any rock contingency is spelled out instead of buried.
A lowboy shows up with the dozer and excavator, usually within a few weeks of a signed quote. We need a gate the iron fits through and a spot for the trailer, and we handle the rest.
Two to five working days for most ponds. Topsoil gets stripped and saved, the core trench gets cut, the dam goes up in compacted lifts, and the basin takes shape a bench at a time. You are welcome on site every day of it, at a safe distance from the swing radius.
Before the machines load, we walk the pond with you: dam, spillway, slopes, and the topsoil dressed back over the banks. If it does not match what was quoted, that is the moment we make it right.
Then you wait for weather. Clay has to be worked dry to compact properly, so we book around the forecast. That is the part people find frustrating and it is also the part that decides whether your 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. On Pflugerville blackland there is normally no sealing line item, which is the single biggest saving compared with sandy or rocky country. Access for a lowboy and how far the spoil has to travel are the two things most likely to move the number.
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.
No surprise line items. Here is how the number breaks down on every quote we write.
Siting and design against your watershed, staking, topsoil stripped and saved, the core trench, the dam built in compacted lifts, the spillway cut and shaped, slopes finished to mow, and topsoil dressed back over the banks. Machine transport is in the quote, and so is the walkthrough before we leave.
What moves the number on a Pflugerville job: how far a lowboy can get in, whether the site needs clearing first, how far the spoil has to be carried, and whether you want the dirt spread, stockpiled or shaped into something useful like a pad or a berm.
Real ponds, real day counts, photographed on site.
Pond dig in heavy clay, Pflugerville
Pond build on Manor blackland
Lined pond from the air, ManorFull process, statewide services, and the build standard: our Texas pond construction page.
Pflugerville has grown out fast, and the properties that call us are usually the ones the subdivisions have not reached: five, ten, twenty acres out toward Coupland, Manor and the Tesla corridor. A pond on that kind of place does three jobs at once. It waters stock, it puts a view on the property, and it takes water that used to sheet across the pasture and holds it where you want it.
Most pond sites need clearing before a machine can shape anything, and on blackland that usually means mesquite, elm and hackberry along the draw where the pond wants to go. We are a land clearing company first, so the brush comes out and the basin gets cut on the same mobilisation, by the same crew, on one bill. You are not coordinating two contractors and paying two transport charges.
The published chart is priced at six feet of depth at centre, and six feet will hold water here. If the pond is going to matter to you in a dry summer, go deeper. Eight feet or more at centre gives you a cold layer that resists evaporation, keeps algae and weed growth down, and means a hard year draws the pond down rather than emptying it.
Central Texas does not rain gently. A pond here has to survive the kind of storm that drops five inches in an afternoon, which means a properly built emergency spillway cut to grade and a dam wide enough not to be overtopped. That is engineering you do not see once the water is in, and it is the difference between a pond that lasts thirty years and one that washes out the first big year.
A new pond looks raw. The banks are bare dirt, the water is the colour of the clay it came out of, and it takes a season for that to settle. Get grass on the banks before the first big rain and the pond clears up faster and stops feeding silt back into itself.
Every pond is slowly filling in from the day it is finished. What decides how slowly is what is happening upstream. Grass cover on the watershed, a fenced-off approach so stock are not breaking the banks down, and a small forebay to catch sediment before it reaches the main basin will all buy you decades.
If cattle are drinking from it, keep them off the dam. Hoof traffic on a dam face is the most common way a good pond turns into a leaking one. A fenced pond with a gravity trough below it costs a little more up front and outlasts an open one by years.
You will find out what your pond is really worth in the third hot August. That is when depth stops being an abstraction. A six foot pond gets low and warm and green; a nine foot pond keeps a cold layer at the bottom and comes through it. Every pond owner we know who went deeper is glad they did.
The build does not have to stop when the water shows up. These come with the same one-crew, one-call approach as the pond itself.
Bare banks wash. We seed and mat the disturbed ground so the first storm does not put your dam back in the basin, using a mix suited to Central Texas rather than whatever was on the shelf.
Moving water stays cleaner. An aerator or a fountain keeps oxygen through the whole column, holds algae back in summer, and is what makes the difference between a pond you swim in and a pond you look at.
A dock or a hardened approach turns a pond into somewhere you actually go. We can shape and compact the ground for one while the machines are still on site, which is far cheaper than bringing them back.
Fish want structure and depth before they want stocking. We can leave brush piles, a drop off and a shelf while the basin is open, so when you do stock it the pond is already built to hold fish.
Absolutely the best service you could ask for. When Bobby said he would be at our property every day at 0700 and work from 0730 to 1530 he meant it. He was here every day 5 minutes early.
lewis ecker, Google review
Taylor, Preston, and the machine operator Steve were consummate professionals every step of the way. The bidding process, delivery of the machine, and frequent communication during the heavy rain were all handled well.
Derek Knapp, Google review
I have nothing but great things to say about Pierce Land Clearing. They were punctual and professional. Bobby was an artist on his machine. Great folks and great work.
Cory Cox, Google review
Six terms you will hear on the site walk, and what they actually mean for your water.
The key cut through the dam footprint, backfilled with compacted clay, that stops water tracking under the dam instead of sitting behind it. On Pflugerville blackland it is the single most important thing in the build.
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.
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.
Pricing starts at $12,300 for a quarter acre pond at six feet of depth with a 4:1 bank, and runs to $39,500 for two acres. Minimum job is $8,000. Those are real starting numbers, not a range designed to get us on your property. What moves them is access, how far the spoil has to be hauled, and whether any clearing is needed first.
Almost certainly. Pflugerville sits on Blackland Prairie clay, which compacts into a natural seal as the basin is cut. That is why ponds here rarely need a liner or bentonite. We still dig a test pit before quoting, because the honest answer comes out of the ground rather than off a map.
Usually some of it, and we do that too. Pond sites tend to sit in the low ground where brush is thickest. Because we are a land clearing company that also builds ponds, the clearing and the dig happen on one mobilisation with one crew and 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 Pflugerville city limit as part of a development. We will tell you which of those applies before anything starts.
Six feet at centre is where the price list starts and it will hold water. Eight feet or more is what we recommend if you want the pond to survive a dry summer without turning into a puddle. Depth is cheap while the machine is already there and expensive to add later.
Around Pflugerville you are working with roughly 34 inches of rain a year, mostly in spring and autumn. Most ponds sized off the chart fill over one or two wet seasons, faster if the watershed feeding it is generous. We size the catchment as part of the walk so the answer is specific to your ground rather than a guess.
A quarter acre pond is usually two to three days on site. A one acre pond runs five to six, and two acres is nine or ten. Clearing, if the site needs it, is on top of that and we will give you both numbers separately so you can see what you are paying for.
Yes, and on older places around Pflugerville that is often the better job. Rebuilding the dam with a proper key trench and cutting a spillway sized for the catchment usually costs less than starting again and gives you a pond that behaves like new.
Tell us roughly how big you want the water and where you are thinking of putting it. We will walk the ground with you, dig a test pit, and give you a written number with the transport in it.