PIERCE
LAND
CLEARING
Most of the ponds we get called about were built by someone else, years ago, and have silted in, gone shallow or never held water. Here is what a rehab involves once the pond is dry, when a rebuild beats a patch, and what it cost on a pond we rebuilt in September.
A pond rehab is done dry. Once the water is down, a dozer and an excavator strip the silt and old growth out of the basin, cut the center deeper, reshape the banks to a consistent slope, rebuild the dam with a compacted clay core if it leaks, and seal the basin with bentonite if the soil needs it. It is priced like a new pond of the finished size, from our published price list, with the stripping added on. The half acre we rebuilt at Lockhart, taken from a leaking quarter acre at six feet to a half acre at ten feet and sealed, ran $20,000 to $22,000 over four days with a Cat D3. A patch that only seals or only deepens costs less, but on a pond that is both shallow and leaking a patch is usually money spent twice.
We do not dredge. A pond with water in it is not something we work in, and anyone who tells you they can deepen a full pond from a barge is quoting a different, much more expensive kind of job. Everything on this page assumes the pond is drained, which most Texas ponds will do on their own over a dry stretch, or can be pumped down.
It silts in. Every rain carries soil off the watershed into the pond, and the pond keeps it. A stock tank dug in the 1970s at eight feet can be four feet of water over four feet of mud today. The silt is fertile, it grows cattails and willow, and it makes the pond shallower and warmer every year until it is a marsh in August.
It was dug too shallow. A lot of older tanks were dug to whatever depth the water table or the operator’s patience allowed, often five or six feet. That is not enough depth to survive a Central Texas summer. The fix is depth, and depth means moving dirt.
It leaks. Through the basin, because the soil is sandy or gravelly and was never sealed, or through the dam, because the dam was pushed up in one loose lift with no core trench. The bucket test tells the two apart.
The dam and spillway are failing. Cattle have cut the banks down, the emergency spillway has eroded into a gully, or the pipe through the dam is rusted through and piping water around itself. A dam that goes in a big rain takes the pond and sometimes the fence line below it.
Somebody built it wrong. The most common call of all: a previous owner or a previous contractor dug a hole, pushed the dirt into a bank, and called it a pond. It filled once with a big rain and has never filled since. That was Lockhart.
The pond has to be down and the basin firm enough to carry a machine. In a dry summer that happens on its own; otherwise it is pumped. We do not start until the floor will hold a dozer without rutting, because a machine working in mud makes a worse pond than the one you had.
The dozer and excavator take the accumulated silt, cattails, willow and brush out of the basin down to the original floor and beyond. The silt is good topsoil and usually goes into a low spot on the property or is spread on a pasture. It usually stays on the property.
The center goes to the depth the pond should have had, usually eight to ten feet, sometimes more. This is where a rehab earns its money: the extra depth is what keeps the pond through the next drought and keeps the water cool enough to hold fish. The spoil from the cut goes into the dam or the banks.
Banks are cut to a consistent slope, three to one where the owner wants the most water for the least dirt, four to one as the standard, five to one on a side that cattle will water from or people will wade in. Consistent banks are what make the seal work and what keep the edges from caving.
A leaking dam is opened along the leak, a core trench is cut into solid ground beneath it, and the dam is rebuilt over a compacted clay core in lifts. A rusted or leaking pipe comes out and is reset with anti seep collars, or the pond is redesigned around an open emergency spillway cut to the side of the dam.
On sandy or gravelly ground the basin gets sodium bentonite spread, worked into the top layer and compacted. How much, and what it costs, is on the bentonite page with a calculator. The seal always goes on last, after every cut is finished.
The whole basin is track packed and the pond is handed over dry. The next big rain fills it. That is true of every pond we build or rebuild and we say it up front so nobody is surprised by a dry hole in September.
| The pond | What it needs | How it is priced |
|---|---|---|
| Right depth, right shape, holds water, silted in | Strip the silt, reshape as needed | Dozer and excavator days at published rates, quoted on the walk |
| Right depth and shape, leaks through the basin | Bentonite seal | Loads of clay plus dozer days; see the calculator |
| Holds water, dam is wet or eroding | Dam rebuild with a clay core, spillway cut | Dozer and excavator days, quoted on the walk |
| Shallow, silted, leaks, or never held water | Rebuild: strip, deepen, reshape, dam, seal | Priced like a new pond of the finished size plus the strip |
The last row is where most old tanks land, and it is the one owners resist because it sounds like starting over. It is not. The watershed is proven, the site drains to the right spot, the dam location is known, and often half the dirt is already where it needs to be. A rebuild on an existing pond is usually a shorter job than a new pond of the same size on raw ground.
A quarter acre pond another contractor had dug outside Lockhart, about six feet deep, would not hold water. It took the runoff, held it for a few weeks and gave it back to the ground, and by the time we saw it the basin was grown over in brush. The owner wanted a pond that worked, not a patch.
Four days on site with a Cat D3. The old basin was stripped and the footprint opened to a half acre. The center went to ten feet. The banks were cut to three to one. Sodium bentonite was spread across the floor and banks, bladed into the surface and the whole basin was track packed. The pond was handed over dry and fills from the first big rain.
The job ran $20,000 to $22,000. Our price list starts a new half acre at $19,200 for six feet on a four to one bank, so the rebuild to ten feet with a seal came in a little above a new pond of the same size, which is what a rebuild usually does. The full write up with the before, during and after photos is on the Lockhart project page.
Four days later, outside Paige, the same size of pond went the other way. An old half acre that would not hold water was cut two feet deeper to eight feet, and the cut reached clay, so the D3 spread it over the banks and the dam instead of a truckload of bentonite coming in. Three days, $9,000 to $10,000, and that job is on the Paige project page. Same county line, same size, same month, and a $10,000 difference decided by what was under the floor.
Not us. Deepening a full pond is dredging, which is a specialty with its own equipment and its own price, and we do not do it. Let the pond go down over a dry spell or pump it, and we do the rest with a dozer and an excavator.
It stays on the property unless you want it gone. It is fertile topsoil and usually goes to a low spot, a pasture or the back of the dam.
Lockhart, a half acre rebuild with a seal, took four days. A strip and reshape on a tank that already holds water is shorter. A rebuild with a dam repair is longer. The site walk sets the day count and the day count sets the price.
Usually rehab, because the watershed and the dam location are already proven and some of the dirt is already in place. The exception is a pond that was sited where no runoff reaches it, which no amount of digging fixes.
Yes, when the dam is the problem. A core trench cut into solid ground and a compacted clay core in lifts is what stops water moving under and through the fill.
Late summer into fall, when ponds are naturally low and the ground is dry enough to carry machines. A rehab finished in the fall usually has water in it by spring.
Send a photo of the pond as it sits, the size, and what it does in summer, and you get back which row of the table you are in and a starting number.