How Much Does a Building Pad Cost in Texas?
A national cost guide puts leveling the ground for a new house or an addition at about $1,000 to $6,700. The same guide lists grading by area at about $0.08 to $2.00 per square foot. A pad built up with imported fill costs more, because fill is bought and placed by the cubic yard.
On Texas clay, the soil report can shape the price as much as the pad’s size. National cost guides list fill dirt at about $5 to $30 a cubic yard. One guide puts two soil borings with a geotechnical report at about $1,400 to $1,600.
These are market numbers, not our price list. Our site preparation page covers how we build pads for homes and commercial sites.
What are the market ranges for a building pad?
The table draws on three national cost guides updated in 2025 and 2026, plus one City of Fort Worth fee. Few pads use every line.
| Line item | Market range |
|---|---|
| Leveling for a new house or an addition | $1,000 to $6,700 |
| Grading by area | $0.08 to $2.00 per square foot |
| Cut and fill excavation | $60 to $200 per cubic yard |
| Fill dirt | $5 to $30 per cubic yard |
| One truckload of fill dirt | $344 to $1,339 |
| Two 15-foot borings with a geotechnical report | $1,400 to $1,600 |
| Compaction test | $100 to $125 per test location |
| Grading permit, where one is needed | $150 to $485 |
| Fort Worth grading permit, 1 acre or more | $950 plus $25 per acre, plus filing fees |
A house pad on a nearly level lot may need little beyond grading and a few tests. A built-up pad on clay can use every line, and the testing lines repeat as the pad rises.
How do size and fill depth change the price?
Fill is bought by volume, so size and height multiply each other. Multiply the pad’s length by its width and its height in feet, then divide by 27. The answer is cubic yards of compacted fill.
A pad 60 feet by 40 feet, raised 2 feet, holds about 178 cubic yards. At $5 to $30 a yard, that dirt alone comes to about $900 to $5,300. Loose dirt shrinks as it is compacted, so the order runs higher. Each added foot of height on that pad adds about 89 more cubic yards.
Height also brings in the code. The International Residential Code, the model code for houses, limits fill under a slab. Unless approved, the cap is 24 inches of clean sand or gravel, or 8 inches of earth. Deeper pads are built where approved, and the city building inspector says what approval takes.
Which costs less: select fill or dirt from the site?
Dirt already on the site usually costs less when the soil report accepts it. A cut on the high side fills the low side, and no fill is trucked in.
On expansive clay, the report may call for removing a layer of native clay. Select fill, a soil picked because it swells less, goes in its place. That changes the math twice. The clay has to go somewhere, and the select fill has to be bought and trucked in.
Distance weighs on that second cost. One national guide notes that larger trucks and longer distances raise delivery prices. Ask each bidder which fill the quote assumes. That one choice can explain much of the gap between two quotes.
What do the soil report and compaction tests add?
A geotechnical report starts with borings, holes drilled to pull soil samples for a lab. The report then recommends how much clay comes out and what fill goes in.
Where soil data point to expansive clay, the building official decides whether to require a soil test. TxDOT, the state highway department, has its own method for clay swell. It estimates the potential vertical rise, or PVR: how many inches the soil under a foundation could swell. It samples the top 15 feet in most cases, and as deep as 20 feet in highly expansive clay.
Fill goes down in layers, called lifts. A testing lab checks the density of the lifts as the pad rises. A national cost guide prices a compaction test at about $100 to $125 per test location. A failed lift gets reworked and tested again.
Why does North Texas clay raise the price?
Clay swells when it gets wet and shrinks as it dries. The federal soil survey describes Sanger clay, found mainly in the Grand Prairie of north-central Texas, as high in shrink-swell. In dry periods it cracks a half inch to 3 inches wide, a foot down. Houston Black, a Blackland Prairie clay, cracks up to 4 inches wide.
The residential code calls a soil expansive when it meets four lab tests. One is a plasticity index of 15 or more, the moisture range in which a soil stays moldable. Foundations and slabs on expansive soil must then follow the code’s expansive soil design rules.
TxDOT’s own fill spec shows what clay does to the work. It wants clay with a plasticity index over 15 compacted at or above its optimum moisture. For a pad, the soil report sets the targets, and bringing dry clay up to moisture takes water and time.
Each fix the report picks has a price. More clay out means more select fill in.
How is a commercial pad priced?
A commercial pad follows the same math at a bigger scale. The cost of getting machines to the site spreads across far more yards. A bigger footprint also takes more borings, so its soil report costs more than a house lot’s.
In Fort Worth, a project that disturbs 1 acre or more needs a city grading permit. Smaller sites inside a common plan of development of 1 acre or more need one too. The city asks for signed and sealed civil plans and a stormwater pollution prevention plan. The permit fee is $950 plus $25 per acre, plus application and technology fees.
What should a written pad quote cover?
Two pad quotes only compare when they name the same work. Ask each one to list these pieces:
- Stripping roots and topsoil from the footprint
- Cut and fill to the pad elevation on the plan
- Clay removal and select fill, if the soil report calls for them
- A proof roll, heavy equipment run over the ground to find soft spots
- Fill placed in lifts, with each lift compacted
- Who hires the testing lab, and who pays for retests
- The final grade, sloped so water runs off the pad
Texas law has a call-before-you-dig rule for machine work 16 inches deep or more. The excavator must notify Texas 811 at least 48 hours ahead, weekends and holidays aside.
Shaping the rest of the lot so water drains away is land grading work. Once the pad passes its tests, the slab can go on. We pour slabs on the sites we prepare, as part of our concrete work. If the lot still has brush and trees, our guide to land clearing cost per acre covers that first step.
What is the next step for a building pad in Texas?
Send the plans, and the soil report if you have one. We look at the site and put the quote in writing. Call or text (214) 557-5106, or read more about building pads and site work.