Driftwood is unincorporated, rural, and made up almost entirely of large lots. It produces the longest cable runs and the highest backup-power attach rate of anywhere we work.
No city, so the county permits everything
There is no city building department here. Every permit and inspection goes through Hays County.
That is a different process and a different scheduling queue from an address inside Dripping Springs a few miles away. It is not a problem — it is simply a thing to know before booking, and we confirm it against the address rather than assuming from the mailing town.
Distance is the defining feature
Lots here are measured in acres. The distance between the electrical service and where a vehicle actually parks — or where the owner would rather charge, which is often a shop or a barn rather than the house — is routinely a few hundred feet.
That has two consequences. Conductors must be sized against the measured run rather than the breaker rating, because voltage drops over distance and a circuit that looks correct at the panel arrives weakened at the far end. And where an outbuilding already carries load, a subpanel out there is frequently better design than pushing a single very long branch circuit across the property.
We measure rather than estimate, and on the longest runs the conductor is heavier than people expect. That is the price of a circuit that performs properly for twenty years.
Rock, effectively everywhere
Hard limestone under thin caliche is the default across this area. A long run is a long cut.
This is where the honest conversation about alternatives matters most. Sometimes the best answer is not to trench two hundred feet at all — it is to reposition the charger, to route through existing structures, or to reconsider where the car parks. We will put those options on the table before quoting an excavation, because on Driftwood-sized properties the trench can exceed everything else on the job combined.
Well water raises the stakes on backup
A large share of properties here are on well water and septic. Losing power means losing water pressure, not just lights, and that changes the calculation on backup power entirely.
Combined with sitting at the far end of the distribution network — where restoration after regional weather is slowest — it is why generators and battery systems come up in most conversations here rather than occasionally.
For generators, the well pump is a load that has to be in the sizing rather than remembered afterwards. Propane is the fuel, since mains do not reach these properties, and the tank has to be sized for a multi-day event rather than for a heating appliance.
Custom housing, varied services
Building here is largely custom rather than tract, and the electrical services vary as much as the houses do. The load calculation establishes what is actually present, because nothing about the property tells you from the outside.
Pedernales
PEC territory throughout. Member rather than customer, cooperative process for service work, and no Austin Energy rebate reaches Hays County.