Excavation Contractor in Spring Branch, TX

Which office issues a permit on a Spring Branch address?

A Spring Branch mailing address does not tell you which office to call. The City of Spring Branch, incorporated in 2015, issues only two kinds of permit, for signs and for outdoor lighting. It does not issue building or development permits. Its limits are a thin strip along US 281, Spring Branch Road and FM 311.

South of Rodeo Drive or north of Highway 306, the city says a property is very likely outside its limits. That holds even when the mail says Spring Branch, TX 78070. Inside the City of Bulverde or its extraterritorial jurisdiction, the ETJ, that city is the office to call. On unincorporated land, the Comal County Engineer's Office is the one to call.

Comal County lists the permits that may be required on unincorporated land. A septic, or OSSF, application goes in with a design from a registered engineer or sanitarian. A TCEQ-licensed installer sets and permits the system. A driveway or other work in the public right-of-way takes a PIPROW permit.

Property owners associations can add requirements of their own, the county notes, so read those rules too. All of this is general information, not legal advice. The office that covers your parcel has the last word, and we plan the job around what it says.

How much rock sits under a Spring Branch homesite?

Soil here runs thin over limestone. The two-county soil survey for Comal and Hays counties has Comfort-Rock outcrop complex as its largest map unit. Brackett-Rock outcrop-Comfort complex and a rubbly Rumple-Comfort association come next. That survey covers two whole counties, so it cannot say what is under one lot.

Federal series descriptions call Comfort soil shallow to hard limestone bedrock, and Eckrant very shallow to shallow over it. Brackett formed in limestone, mainly from the Glen Rose formation. Comfort soils are mostly used for rangeland and rural homesites. Where the rock starts on your lot is the first thing we look for on the site visit.

On this ground a pad, a footing trench or a driveway cut is usually rock work. We run excavators with buckets, thumbs and demolition attachments, and dump truck hauling takes off what the job cannot reuse. On a homesite, underground utilities mean a trench cut through that same stone. Before any of it, Texas 811 gets our call at least 48 hours ahead, weekends and legal holidays excluded.

Land clearing in Spring Branch: cedar and live oaks

Cedar has been part of the work here for a long time. In nearby Smithson Valley, the Handbook of Texas says cutting cedar posts became an important local industry. Ashe juniper, the tree people here call cedar, is a non-sprouting species. Cut low, it does not come back from the stump.

So forestry mulching fits a cedar brake here well. The mulcher grinds the cedar down where it stands, and the chips stay on the ground to cover the soil. Pad sites and driveway lines are different, because stumps and roots have to come out for the dirt work. There the excavator pulls them.

Oak wilt changes the calendar for live oaks. The Texas A and M Forest Service says wounding oaks should be avoided from February through June. It also says all oak wounds should be painted immediately, no matter the time of year. So when underbrushing runs around your oaks, those dates set the schedule and any cut gets painted.

River bottoms and the Edwards Aquifer in western Comal County

Water shaped this community. It is named for a spring that flows into the Guadalupe River, and the D. Knibbe family settled it in 1852. Guadalupe River State Park, with four miles of river frontage, carries a Spring Branch, TX 78070 address. Near the river, development inside the regulatory floodplain needs a Floodplain Development Permit from the county.

The Texas Commission on Environmental Quality, or TCEQ, runs an Edwards Aquifer program that covers Comal County. Building on the aquifer's recharge or contributing zone takes a TCEQ-approved plan first. Only portions of the aquifer are regulated, and TCEQ's map viewer shows whether your tract sits over one. Separately, construction that disturbs an acre or more comes under TCEQ's stormwater rules.

The area grew after Canyon Dam and the filling of Canyon Lake in the mid-1960s. Around Smithson Valley, housing and commercial developments had begun by the early 1990s. Those homesites and the older places around them are the work here: pads, driveways, stock tanks and old-place teardowns. We come up from Pleasanton, north through San Antonio and up US 281.