House Pad & Building Pad Site Prep in Central Texas

What's Included

A pad is the ground your building sits on for the rest of its life. Here is everything that goes into building one right.

• House Pads

  We build raised, compacted pads for slab-on-grade homes, set to the elevation your builder or engineer calls for.

• Building Pads

  Commercial and agricultural buildings get pads sized to the footprint plus working room around the edges for forms and equipment.

• Shop and Barn Pads

  Shops, barns, and equipment sheds need a flat, firm base that will carry heavy loads without cracking the slab.

• Pad Site Preparation

  Before any fill goes down, we clear the pad site, strip organic topsoil, and cut high spots with dozer work so fill sits on solid ground.

• Select Fill and Compaction in Lifts

  We place select fill in thin layers and compact each lift before the next goes on. That is what keeps a pad from settling under the slab.

• Pad Elevation and Crown

  The finished pad is set above surrounding grade with a slight crown so rainwater sheds away from the building instead of pooling against it.

Barndominium & Metal Building Pads

Barndominiums and metal buildings are some of the most common pads we build. They usually have large, open slabs with no interior walls to hide a crack, so the pad under them has to be flat, square, and uniformly compacted from corner to corner.

We confirm the building dimensions with your supplier or erector, build the pad a few feet wider than the slab on each side, and set elevation so the finished floor sits comfortably above the yard. When the building arrives, the crew has a firm, level pad to work on.

Problems We Fix

"The builder rejected our pad because it was not compacted." "Our lot slopes and we do not know how high the pad needs to be." "The metal building kit is coming in six weeks and we have nothing ready." "Water runs toward the spot where we want to build."

We build pads that pass inspection and hold up, and we coordinate timing with your builder so you are not paying for a crew to wait on dirt.

Central Texas Ground Conditions

Pads on the Blackland Prairie clay around Waco, Hillsboro, and Temple are where expansive soil does the most damage. Clay under a slab swells and shrinks with the seasons and can crack a foundation. Replacing or capping that clay with select fill, compacted in lifts at proper moisture, is what gives a slab a stable base.

In Bosque and Coryell counties, pad sites often sit on shallow limestone with cedar growing out of the rock. Here the challenge is clearing, cutting rock to reach a flat base, and bringing in enough fill to build up elevation where the natural soil is too thin.

What Affects the Cost

Pad cost depends on the pad size, how high it needs to be built, how much select fill has to be brought in, haul distance, clearing and topsoil stripping, rock, compaction and testing requirements, and site access for trucks.