PIERCE
LAND
CLEARING
Taylor is where deep blackland farm country meets a semiconductor boom, and the acreage buyers arriving want the same thing the farmers always had: their own water. This dirt makes it easy.
East Williamson County is the prairie the county was farmed on: black, deep, and tight. For pond building it is close to ideal, with two honest caveats.
Taylor tracts run some of the deepest blackland in the region: no rock to hammer, no sand to seal, just heavy clay that compacts into a bowl. Builds here run the published list as cleanly as anywhere on our map, and quarter acre tanks finish in the two-to-three day range.
Thirty minutes south, our documented Elgin builds ran this same prairie clay, photographed start to finish.
The prairie is flat, so watershed design matters more here than in hill country: a pond needs ground genuinely draining to it, and on some tracts that means a shallow harvest ditch guiding runoff in. And the open sky means evaporation, so depth, 8 feet minimum, is non-negotiable.
Both are design problems, both are solvable, and both are free to solve at the staking stage.
Blackland ground, booming county, simple process. Here is the full arc of a pond build outside Taylor.
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.
A Taylor site walk is blackland prairie reading: we find the draw, confirm the clay, and size the watershed. The soil out here rarely argues, it is the same deep black clay that made this farm country, and it seals a pond almost by habit. So the walk spends its time on the decisions that matter: where the dam line sits, how deep the center goes, and how the pond serves the property you are actually building.
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.
Williamson County blackland sheds storms in sheets toward the San Gabriel and Brushy Creek, and Taylor catches a solid 35 inches a year. A pond sized to its draw fills on a single wet season. Grass the dam the week we leave, bare blackland gullies fast, watch the spillway do its first work, and expect full pool sooner than you planned for.
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 |
Taylor builds price off the list with unusually few surprises: no rock, rare sealing needs. The design work is in the watershed on flat ground, and that is included in every quote.
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.
The variables list runs short on blackland. Rock hammer time almost never appears east of Taylor, and bentonite rarely, because the clay seals itself. What does show up: brush clearing at published day rates when the site is grown over, and spoil shaping into berms or building pads, which on this flat ground is usually an asset, not a haul-off.
Real ponds, real day counts, photographed on site.
Digging on the blackland
Elgin, 30 min south: 5 days
Elgin expansion: 1 day
Prairie water, standing full
The finished product: water that staysFull process, statewide services, and the build standard: our Texas pond construction page.
The Taylor land rush is real: farm sections cutting into five and ten acre tracts from Hutto to Thrall, and every one closes with the same missing piece, water on the land. On this clay a pond is a two-to-three day add that turns a bare tract into a place, and doing it before the house goes vertical is the cheap sequencing.
This county is dotted with Depression-era farm tanks dug shallow and silted shallower. The dirt around them is still perfect; the tanks just need depth and dam work. Rebuilding an old Taylor tank on equipment day rates is routinely the best water value in the county, and we assess the old dam free with any site walk.
On the prairie, water does not rush anywhere, it wanders. Good Taylor pond design reads the subtle fall of the tract, sometimes steers runoff with a gentle harvest swale, and sizes the pond to what the ground actually delivers. It is unglamorous math that decides whether your pond fills the first spring or sits at half pool for years.
Taylor sits on blackland that farmers have trusted for a century and pond builders trust for the same reason: it packs tight and holds water. The core trench keys into it cleanly, the dam raises in honest lifts, and the basin seals without additives. Our work here is craft and proportion rather than chemistry, which keeps builds quick and quotes clean.
With the plants and the growth pushing land values across eastern Williamson County, a well-built pond is one of the few improvements that raises a property’s worth and its usefulness at once. Stock water, irrigation reserve, evening fishery, and the view from the porch, one dig covers all four, and it outlasts every fence on the place.
Open blackland ponds get no shade and a long summer. Eight feet or more at center is the rule: cool water for fish, slower evaporation, and warm shallows kept too small for the weed beds. On flat prairie the extra depth also stores the storm water this ground sheds so willingly.
Seed and matting go on the dam before we load out, and your job is watering the grass in. Give the pond a few months of steady water, then stock minnows and bluegill first, bass the next season. Fertile blackland water grows a fishery on the fast end of every timeline we quote.
When a Taylor site starts as mesquite or overgrown fence line, we handle it as the Taylor clearing crew we already are: grubbed so nothing resprouts, keeper trees protected, and the saved topsoil dressed back over every finished grade. The pond reads as farm improvement, not construction site.
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.
Blackland is the fastest-gullying soil we work when it sits bare, so every dam gets seed and matting as the build’s final act. By the first summer it mows like a lawn and holds like a levee.
Fertile prairie water blooms algae in the heat unless it keeps moving. A bottom diffuser holds oxygen through the column and keeps the water sweet; a fountain does it with style on the pond you see from the house.
A dock planned on the site walk costs a fraction of one retrofitted later. We shape the shelf and grade while the basin is dry so the finished pier sits level over real depth from day one.
Forage first, bass a season later, that stocking order turns a Taylor tank into a genuine fishery. Fertile water does the growing; you just supply the patience and the evening to enjoy it.
Pierce Land Clearing did an amazing job. Our property was covered in extremely thick cedar. They came out and cleared it for us and transformed our land. They are friendly and knowledgeable.
Rob Rindone, Google review
This company is simply the best. They are very professional, did the work they said they would do, it looks great, far beyond our expectations. They were on time and worked a full day. It is probably the best experience we have ever had with a contractor.
D’Layne Rhynsburger, Google review
From the moment I saw this forestry machine on their website, I not only believed it would get the job done but I desperately wanted one. To say it got the job done is a gross understatement. Cedar trees have no chance!
David McFadden, Google review
Six terms you will hear on the site walk, and what they actually mean for your 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.
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 prairie ring around Taylor, and the crews already in it.
The published list, run clean: quarter acre from $12,300 at 6 feet on a 4:1 bank, and Taylor blackland is about the most list-price dirt we work. The calculator above runs your exact numbers.
If the watershed math works, yes, and on flat ground that math is the design job. We read the fall of the tract, steer runoff with a swale when needed, and size the pond to what the land delivers. That work is in every quote.
Practically never in the blackland east of I-35. Taylor builds are clay all the way down, which is why they run the list without hammer contingencies.
Usually, and usually it is the best value on the tract: depth restored and the dam rebuilt on equipment day rates. Our documented one day Elgin expansion, 30 minutes south, is what that looks like.
Eight feet minimum, ten preferred. The prairie sky takes several feet a year in evaporation, and depth is the only defense that works while you are at work.
Before, almost always: machines work free of landscaping, spoil helps the pad, and the pond catches a storm season while the house is in permitting.
Send photos and a rough size. On this clay the quote reads like the price list, and the watershed design comes free with the walk.