Rock under your land changes two things on a ground mount: the foundation and the trench to your meter.
We pulled the USDA soil survey at about a hundred points around each of 18 North Texas towns, 1,898 points in all, and counted how often bedrock sits within three feet of the surface.
Some towns are mostly rock. Some have none. In most, it depends which side of town you are on.
| Town | Points checked | Rock within 3 ft | Rockiest side |
|---|---|---|---|
| Midlothian | 107 | 64% | east 96% |
| Fort Worth (west side) | 95 | 58% | west 71% |
| Mineral Wells | 111 | 54% | north 69% |
| Waxahachie | 108 | 42% | west 88% |
| Allen | 113 | 30% | north 38% |
| Azle | 101 | 30% | east 50% |
| Weatherford | 111 | 29% | south 35% |
| Flower Mound | 105 | 27% | west 36% |
| Celina | 113 | 23% | east 42% |
| Fairview | 111 | 23% | west 33% |
| McKinney | 113 | 21% | west 58% |
| Southlake | 104 | 17% | north 48% |
| Burleson | 112 | 10% | — |
| Lucas | 97 | 8% | north 20% |
| Grand Prairie | 108 | 6% | east 23% |
| Rockwall | 89 | 1% | north 4% |
| Fate | 111 | 0% | — |
| Heath | 89 | 0% | — |
Rock near the surface stops a driven pile early and makes the trench slower. Rocky ground adds ten percent to the equipment and trench subtotal.
Which side of town you are on is a question about your parcel, so we pull the soil map for it before we quote a foundation.
What the rest of the price is: ground mount cost in Texas.
Source: the USDA Natural Resources Conservation Service soil survey (SSURGO), queried through Soil Data Access in fall 2026.
Around each town we took about a hundred points on mapped land within six miles, and counted a point as rock when the survey puts bedrock within three feet of the surface. North, east, south and west are the four sides of town.
Around Heath and Rockwall, only 89 of the 113 points landed on mapped soil (Lake Ray Hubbard is inside Heath's circle), so we counted those 89. For Fort Worth, the circle sits on the west side of the city and does not reach downtown.
A soil survey maps soil types across the land. It does not drill your yard. Use it to know what to expect, not to skip the dig.
Quoting these numbers? Link to this page so readers can see how they were counted.
On the west side, often. 58 percent of the USDA soil survey points we checked within six miles of west Fort Worth reach bedrock within three feet, and 71 percent on its western edge. The sample does not reach downtown.
Fate and Heath, where none of the points we checked reached bedrock within three feet, then Rockwall at 1 percent and Grand Prairie at 6 percent.
Yes. Rock near the surface stops a driven pile early and makes the trench slower. Rocky ground adds ten percent to the equipment and trench subtotal.
