PIERCE
LAND
CLEARING
Spicewood is Lake Travis country: limestone, granite influence off the Llano uplift, and long dry summers. A pond here is worth building and it has to be built for the rock.
Only if it is sealed. Spicewood sits on hard country west of Austin where the soil is thin and the rock beneath it does not hold water on its own.
Spicewood sits where the Edwards limestone starts giving way to the older, harder country of the Llano uplift. Depending on which part of the area you are on you might be digging limestone, or you might be into something considerably tougher a couple of feet down.
That variability is the reason we will not quote a Spicewood pond over the phone. Two neighbouring properties can price very differently, and the only way to know which one you have is to put a machine in the ground for an hour before anybody commits to anything.
Rock will not seal a basin, so the pond gets sealed deliberately: clay won from a draw on your property where there is enough of it, or a liner where there is not. Either way it is a line item you see in writing before work starts.
And out here we push people to go deeper than the chart minimum. Spicewood gets less rain than Austin does and the summers are long. Six feet of water in this country in August is a warm shallow puddle. Nine feet is still a pond.
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.
Text or call with pictures of the spot and what you have in mind. Because the price list is published, we can give you an honest range on the first call, then put a boot on the ground to firm it up.
We walk the ground with you, find where water already collects, and dig a test pit. On Spicewood ground that pit is not optional: soil depth and rock type change from property to property out here.
You get one page with real numbers on it. Excavation, dam construction, spillway, transport, and any flagged contingency, all in plain terms. No allowances that balloon later, no asterisks doing heavy lifting.
Mobilization is usually measured in weeks, not months. The dozer and excavator arrive on a lowboy, we stage at the site, and from that morning the build runs continuously until the pond is done.
The dig itself runs two to five days on most builds. Topsoil is saved for the banks, the core trench goes in first, and the dam is built the slow, right way, in compacted layers rather than one loose push. You will see the pond take shape daily.
We do not leave until you have walked the finished pond with us. The dam, the spillway, the bank grades, the topsoil dressing, all of it inspected against what was promised, and corrected on the spot if it falls short.
Then you wait on weather. Clay has to be worked dry to compact into a proper seal, and on a capped basin in rocky country that discipline is the whole ballgame.
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 Spicewood the quote will include sealing, and often a rock contingency, because what a machine finds two feet down out here varies from one property to the next. We price both up front rather than after we have started.
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.
We would rather explain the number before you sign than after. This is the whole anatomy of a pond quote.
The number includes the pond, whole and finished: design against the watershed, staking, topsoil stripped and banked, core trench, compacted-lift dam, cut spillway, finish-graded slopes, and dressed banks. Getting the iron to your gate and the closing walkthrough are in there too.
What moves the number on a Spicewood job: how deep the soil goes before rock, whether the basin needs a clay cap or a liner, how much usable clay is on your own property, how far a lowboy can get up the drive, and how much cedar has to come out first.
Real ponds, real day counts, photographed on site.
Basin at dusk, Whitney
Pond dirt work, Bertram
Quarter acre pond cut, BurnetFull process, statewide services, and the build standard: our Texas pond construction page.
Spicewood people already live near a great deal of water, which is exactly why a private pond appeals. Lake Travis rises and falls with a drought and with decisions made a long way upstream. A pond on your own ground does neither. It is yours, it is where you put it, and the only thing that governs it is how deep you built it.
Cedar owns every unmowed acre out here and the draw where a pond wants to sit is always the worst of it. Because clearing land is our main trade, the juniper comes out and the basin gets cut on one mobilisation with one crew and one bill.
Spicewood ground is not consistent. Soil depth, the kind of rock underneath and whether there is workable clay anywhere on the property can all change within a few hundred yards. That hour of digging before we quote is the difference between a number you can rely on and one that grows once the work has started.
Roughly 33 inches a year here and long hot summers. A shallow pond in Spicewood spends August warm, green and low, and a run of dry years can empty it. Every foot of depth you add while the excavator is already sitting in the hole is cheap. Adding it later means starting the mobilisation over.
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.
On a sealed pond the first dry stretch is the real test. A steady drop beyond normal evaporation is worth a phone call. Caught early it is usually a small repair; left a season it becomes draining and starting over.
Permanent water is scarce in this country and it gets found quickly. Deer, turkey and everything else will be using it within weeks. If that is part of the point, leave one gentle bank and keep some cover near the water.
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. In Spicewood that difference is the entire argument for depth.
When the dirt work is done you can keep the same crew on the finish work. These four add-ons turn a new basin into a finished pond.
Bare banks wash, and thin soil over rock washes fastest. We seed and mat the disturbed ground with a mix suited to this country so the first storm does not undo the shaping.
Moving water stays cleaner. An aerator or fountain keeps oxygen through the column and holds algae back through a long Spicewood summer.
A dock or a hardened bank turns a pond into somewhere you use rather than something you look at. We shape and compact for one while the machines are still on site.
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.
We had a great experience with Pierce Land Clearing. Customer service was great and the heavy equipment operator was awesome. He was easy to work with and accommodated our requests. Pierce Land Clearing had the best prices and worked with your schedule. They are the best in the area. Highly recommend!
Liz Sanchez, Google review
Preston, Dustin, and Steven just wrapped up an amazing job on an 800-acre commercial property. They were professional, dependable, hardworking, and transparent. I would highly recommend their services to anyone.
Nick Rodriguez, Google review
Pierce Land Clearing is a great family-owned and run business. They are very professional and provide timely, reasonable quotes. We have about 5.5 acres. In 2 days, they cleared most cedar, standing dead trees and mulched all at once with their large forestry machine. They also brought their rock crusher which actually pulverizes rocks. Amazing job!
Maggie Oehlke, Google review
Learn these six and you can grade any pond quote you are handed, including ours.
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.
Clay you can roll into a ribbon in your hand. The soil that seals a pond, and the first thing we look for on the walk.
Texan for a working pond built to water cattle. Usually smaller, always practical, and built with the same dam discipline.
The key cut through the dam footprint, taken down to sound rock and backfilled with compacted clay so water cannot track under the dam. In Spicewood country it is the slowest and most important part of 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.
We build ponds across the Highland Lakes and the country west of Austin. A few of the places we work close to Spicewood:
The chart 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 Spicewood ground expect sealing on top, and sometimes a rock contingency. Both are quoted before anything starts rather than discovered mid job.
Not on its own. The rock out here does not seal. Ponds in this country hold because they are capped with compacted clay or lined. The test pit tells us which route your property needs and roughly what it will cost.
Because Spicewood ground genuinely varies. One property has three feet of soil and a clay draw, the next is into hard rock at eighteen inches. A phone number would be a guess, and guesses on this ground are usually wrong in the expensive direction.
We tell you before it becomes your problem. Sometimes the answer is to shift the pond to better ground on the same property. Sometimes it is to build smaller and deeper. Occasionally it is that a pond is not the right thing on that particular site, and we would rather say so than take the deposit.
Nearly always. Cedar takes over anything unmowed in this country. Clearing is our main trade, so it happens on the same trip as the dig with one crew and one bill rather than two contractors and two transport charges.
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 or sits in a floodplain. Lakeside properties can have their own considerations, and we will tell you what applies before anything starts.
Deeper than the minimum. Six feet holds water but in a Spicewood August it will be warm and low. Eight or nine feet keeps a cold layer at the bottom and carries you through a dry year. What is achievable depends on the rock, which the test pit establishes first.
Yes, and out here it is often a pond that never sealed properly in the first place. We drain it, find where it is losing, and cap or line it. Where the dam is the problem we rebuild it with a proper key trench and cut a spillway that suits the catchment.
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 that accounts for the rock instead of hoping around it.