The wife and I are looking to purchase land where we live in Tyler to build on in the next couple of years. I've found a few pieces that fit the bill and each one has the same answer "utilities are at the road"

My questions:

1. How much is it per pole to run electric these days? Last I checked it was $10,000 a pole a couple years ago and got you about 100ft per pole.

2. How much is it to run your water lines from the city water main at the road back to where you ultimately build? One property we are looking at is 20 acres and we'll want the home set pretty far back off the road.

3. Pond costs and maintenance - one property has a half finished pond. What are the costs associated with digging it out and finishing it and maintaining it? would love to have a small crappie and cat fish pond

4. Internet - same question as number 2. Does the internet company trench and lay the lines? I currently have starlink internet, which works great, but having a hard line is never a bad idea in my opinion.

5. Road construction - will likely do a packed caliche road up to a driveway closer to the house when this is all said and done. How much does a road cost per foot / yard? I'm not sure how they measure aggregate sales these days.

6. Will likely do septic - how much is a septic system? Last i heard its around 7500 -10k all said and done.

7. ??? Anything else i should be considering from an infrastructure standpoint?


Hoping to have my homework together so when I start making offers and they appear to be "low" I can explain to sellers that there are alot of additional costs we need to consider, blah blah BS kinda thing.


Any help is appreciated!

Try hard to get where your utilities are from a Co-op, not a commercial company.

Unless it is incredibly difficult to run wires, it seems your electricity is really, really high. I'm thinking more like $2500 a pole, and a pole every 300 feet, on average.

We got fiber optic run under a paved FM road, and buried a little over a half mile to our barn. It was free, probably because it was a co-op.

Just bought a lot of caliche at $17 a ton, but that was up here in the Panhandle, where it is abundant.

In reply to CanyonAg77 thank you, good info!

Use $15-$20 per foot for pole line

Internet - starlink, don't even look at anything else'. Starlink will outperform anything you will try to get. We have it on the farm, can run 5-6 TVs and tons of other stuff, it never slows down either

You can run your own water and electric lines, just rent a trencher and run pvc to the road connection and let the city do the tie in. same with electricity. On the water, just find a Pedro who can dig the trench and lay 1 inch or 1 1/2" pvc.. I built a few small subdivisions- it's not had. If you can operate a trencher you can lay your own line

On the electricity talk to your provider out there and tell them what you want to do.. they will / may sell you the wire and tell you what size conduit to use if you want to go below ground. if not have them quote above ground poles. Going below ground is no different than running you own water lines. About every 200-250 feet blow a pulling wire through the pipe as your laying the conduit in the ground .. you will need this to pull a bigger rope and the electrical lines through the conduit.

Tying in one house on a farm is about like cooking a cake.. just takes a little time

15k for a new septic system, just installed 2 new systems on the farm recently.. 1 was for the main house and 2nd one was for the barndo. If your gonna try to tie into the cities septic / sewer line get this done professionally, they need to check the grade and make sure it works or else you will need a septic pump system

Is the ROW for the electrical cleared? Don't forget to add that in. I was $10/ft overhead, $35/ft underground. In my county, you can't do it yourself only the portion past the pedestal can you do yourself. You might also have to get neighbor permission if you are tying into their line.

Septic: $12k

Water well: $15k

Road: from scratch, crown road with select fill, ditches on side, then limestone on top. $50/ft. Local caliche would be cheaper.

Don't put crappie in a small pond. You'll have hundreds of 4" crappie.

In reply to Drillbit4 whats a good size pond for crappie?

Poles for me were about 70 yards away, 210 ft and $200 a pole maybe. I had to run quite a ways and used 6 poles.

The main cost was the transformer i think it was 2600 or so....

Definitely didnt pay 10k a pole. Call the electric compsny in that area and ask them to get the right answer.

Septic 15k
Water well 15k to 18k most likely for that area
Stay with starlink

Running conduit from city water line....rent a trencher and do it yourself. Pvc cost and put in some valves to make it easier to isolate in certain locations and work on if needed.

I would go water well route to save money long term instead of paying city rates

Just add 50k to money needed to do what you want and that should ballpark you.

If serious about an area i would call and get pricing/estimates from companies in area so you have a more accurate idea.

I would poll Starlink users before committing. I have AT&T aircard on a grandfathered plan pulling 150mb down. In town, several users testing out Starlink couldn't touch that speed. they couldn't touch 1/4 of it. I don't know why and maybe it was their setup but I would double and triple check all of that before committing. That said, for reasons I cannot fathom, today, in the year of our Lord 2025, broadband internet is limited in a lot of places. Starlink will solve cellular and broadband problems for most all places, but I don't know if it's quite there for heavy traffic areas.

I have starlink and my parents have starlink and we love it. They were not able to stream netflix or amazon prime before. Game changer for them.

I have starlink at the lake and no issues. Watch college football, stream, etc

If you're truly isolated, sure, look at Starlink.

But if you can hit a cell tower, get a system like the AT&T mentioned above, it's pretty decent.

You can test my Starlink. I have a Mini I use at the deer lease and for remote work in my truck. It is as fast and sometimes faster than my Fiber internet at home.

Only time starlink can be slow is if it is obstructed.

In reply to JeremiahJohnson I have Starlink already

We just set all this up for my FIL
$2800 for 2 meters and a 400' of overhead electric
$3000 for 1 1/2 poly line from meter 540'
$1000 for new water meter from main line to gate (20')
The road is the biggest scam, he ended up buying a new 30 hp tractor to build his own road after we got all the bids on building 650' of road and 2 30x30 pads for parking. Just going to box grade it and drop 1" inch gravel on the low spots and the shop parking area. The $15k quote will buy a crap ton of delivered rock and got that tractor payment down to nothing, and he needed that anyways for mowing
Septic was included in the trailer package, but we looked at a several complete aerobic setups for $4-5k installed

In reply to highvelocity

highvelocity said:

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whats a good size pond for crappie?

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Many acres minimum. I don't have an exact answer for you. We had a half acre pond and they got in with a flood. Pond always had well water keeping it full. We had a floating pier and in the winter they would stack up underneath it. Caught hundreds I. The 6-15 inch range and killed all of them. Never put a dent in them. They destroyed the minnow population and really messed up our bass fishing. Catfish not affected. Enjoyed catching them but I missed the bass fishing we used to have.

Agree with Sharkin on the Crappie. It's been my experience that if you want Crappie then you manage your lake/pond for Crappie and nothing else… unless you have a multiple acre lake.

In reply to Deats99 Is this in our area?

Don't know the specific area you have found land, but if Cherokee County Electric Cooperative serves the area, they also have fiber internet available. We are in the Bullard area with CCEC power and have been on their internet for ~3 years. It's been great - wireless in our house is 700 MB down/up. Would probably be 1 GB plugged directly into router. Cost is the same as we were paying for crappy DSL previously.

In reply to highvelocity Quitman

We just did a few of these items in the last year in the BCS area.

Here's what we did:

Electricity: 800' underground primary at $13.20/ft, $2200 for transformer and pedestal. They had to install two poles, one across the road in the existing line and one just inside our fence. $13.5k total after their $2k "allowance"

Water: I intended to trench and run this myself. My septic guy offered to do it for $1.50/ft. 2" line.

Septic: $11k even.

Internet: Starlink

In reply to FirstOnRaceDayAg Going to look at ~6 acres by the new high school this weekend. It's barely inside Cherokee county so this is good info. Helps stay out of Bullard taxes too

why anyone would want to deal with AT&T and fiber versus the simplicity of starlink is beyond me.

In reply to highvelocity As long as the land is not in the Bullard city limits, you should be good.

In reply to fulshearAg96

fulshearAg96 said:

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why anyone would want to deal with AT&T and fiber versus the simplicity of starlink is beyond me.

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$120 a month for Starlink

$50 a month from Co-op for same download and 4x the upload speed

https://www.midplains.coop/internet

Starlink is amazing. But some areas it isn't the best option, some it is.

Definitely check with your electrical provider if it is a co-op. MidSouth ran fiber along their electrical lines and I pay $65 for 100 Mbps, which I think is high, but better than fixed wireless and much cheaper than Starlink. It is more than fast enough and can handle 3 streams with no issues. They have 500 Mbps and 1 Gbps options, but there's no reason for me to pay for it. I believe GVEC also installed in their area several years ago. Along with the others mentioned, it seems like it is somewhat common now. MidSouth received grant money to help with their project costs, so I'm assuming that's a big reason others are doing it as well.

have a handshake deal done on 5 acres in bullard, but inside cherokee county. thought process is:

1. keep land and hold it for appreciate
2. build entrance, pipe top fence, clear out a build site and put in road, hold and let appreciate
3. do all the things on step 2 and build our next home and live there 5 to 10 years.


excited to get to work on it.

For anything buried underground, be sure to put some galvanized marker pipes alongside it and pound it in an inch above ground so you [or your kids] can locate it in 40 years.
ANd trench it deeper than the minimum required depth so it doesn't freeze [water], or get dug up/cut by your tractor, fencepost etc.

Put a 20' heat cable along the water pipe where it comes out of the ground, cheap insurance for when the next Arctic airmass freezes TX.