Yes, on most rural land in Trinity County you can legally burn brush, so long as the brush grew on the property where you burn it, no burn ban is in effect, you are outside city limits, and you follow the conditions in the TCEQ outdoor burning rule. That first sentence carries four conditions, and any one of them can flip the answer to no, so it is worth ten minutes to understand them before you strike a match.
County Line Junk Disposal is based in Trinity, Texas, and brush is a big part of our week. We knock it down with a Mahindra tractor, load it into a hydraulic dump trailer, and haul it off lots from Groveton to Apple Springs, so the burn question comes up on almost every land job we quote. Below is the straight version of the Texas rules, where to check today's ban status, and what to do with the pile when burning is off the table. Getting a hunting camp squared away before season? Our deer lease cleanup guide covers that whole job.
What does the Texas outdoor burning rule actually allow?
Outdoor burning is prohibited by default across Texas under the TCEQ outdoor burning rule, which then lists specific exceptions. The one that matters to landowners: trees, brush, leaves, and trimmings may be burned on the same property where they grew. Trash and construction debris never qualify.
The rule lives in Title 30, Chapter 111 of the Texas Administrative Code, and TCEQ's outdoor burning guidance lays it out in plain language. The structure surprises people. The state starts from a blanket prohibition, then grants a short list of exceptions, and anything outside those exceptions is illegal to burn. For a landowner in unincorporated Trinity County, the exception you care about covers vegetation that grew where it stands: clear a fence line of yaupon and sweetgum on your own place and you can burn the pile there, under the day-of conditions below.
One limit hides inside that sentence. The vegetation has to have grown on the property where you burn it, so hauling a trailer of limbs in from a buddy's place to torch on yours falls outside the exception. Cities are the other catch, since open burning is generally banned inside city limits even when the county around them is clear. If your lot sits in town, plan on chipping or hauling; our guide to clearing an overgrown lot walks through what that looks like in practice.
How do you check for a burn ban in Trinity County?
Pull up the Texas A&M Forest Service burn ban map the morning you plan to burn. It shows the current status of every county in the state, and an active county ban overrides the vegetation exception completely, no matter how legal your pile would be otherwise.
We are deliberately not telling you whether a ban is on right now, because ban status changes with the weather and a months-old blog post is the wrong place to get it. Trinity County bans typically go up during dry stretches and come off after decent rain, sometimes within the same month. The Texas A&M Forest Service burn ban map is the live source, takes about thirty seconds to check, and settles the question for the exact day you want to burn.
Treat a neighbor's word, or a Facebook post from two months back, as rumor. If the map shows a ban, the pile waits or it gets hauled, because burning through a ban risks a citation and, worse, a fire you cannot hold on a dry day. During ban stretches our phone gets busier, since a load of brush in the trailer is legal in any weather.
What are the rules on the day you burn?
Burn only between one hour after sunrise and one hour before sunset, keep the fire downwind of or at least 300 feet from any neighboring structure, and skip windy days entirely. Those conditions come from the TCEQ rule, and blowing past them turns a legal burn into an illegal one.
- Light no earlier than one hour after sunrise, and have it dead out by one hour before sunset
- Keep the fire downwind of, or at least 300 feet from, any structure on a neighboring property
- Hold off in high winds; a gusty East Texas front can carry embers a long way
- Inside city limits, assume the answer is no, since cities generally prohibit open burning
Our own advice on top of the rule: stay with the fire the whole time, keep water and a shovel close, and start smaller than you think you need. A pile of green sweetgum smokes and smolders for days, which is misery for you and everyone downwind. If a pile has sat wet all spring, chipping or hauling is often faster than fighting it.
Can you burn household trash in Texas?
Only where no trash collection service is provided or authorized for your address, and even there, some materials stay illegal in any fire: tires, furniture, carpet, wire, appliances, and non-wood construction debris. If a collection route serves your road, burning household garbage breaks the rule.
This is the exception people stretch the furthest, so read it narrowly. It exists for genuinely remote places with no service at all, and most addresses in our area have some collection option available, which takes the trash-burning exception off the table for them. The vegetation exception covers plant growth only, so the moment an old recliner or a roll of carpet lands on your brush pile, the whole burn stops being legal.
That mixed pile is the most common thing we see on cleanout jobs: brush on the bottom, then scrap lumber, a mattress, a few paint cans, half a shed's worth of leftovers. Sorting it in place is doable but slow. We load the whole thing and route the brush and the junk where each belongs, and our storm debris cleanup guide covers the same problem after a blow-down.
When is hauling brush better than burning it?
Hauling wins when a burn ban is on, when the pile mixes junk with brush, when neighbors sit close, or when the wood is too green to burn clean. We clear and haul brush with a tractor and a hydraulic dump trailer, priced by the space your pile fills.
Our load-size ladder is simple. A single item is $95, a quarter load is $175, a half load is $325, three-quarters is $475, and a full load is $650, and you only pay for the space your stuff actually fills in the trailer. The number we say on site is the number you pay, quoted firm before we lift anything, and you are free to walk if you do not like it. Travel is free within 25 miles of Trinity; past that, out to our 50-mile edge, a small trip fee of about $2 per mile gets quoted upfront.
For bigger clearing work, the Mahindra tractor handles light land clearing along with the brush piles, and we break down what drives the price of that kind of job in our land clearing cost guide. Text a few photos of the pile to (936) 259-3200 and we will send you a ballpark the same day. New customers get 15% off the first job.
Rather not gamble on the weather?
A legal burn takes an open window on the ban map, a calm day, and a pile that cooperates, and out here you can wait weeks for all three to line up. If you would rather the pile just be gone, get a free quote by call or text at (936) 259-3200, 7 days a week, 8 AM to 6 PM. We answer our own phone, and folks in Trinity and the towns around it pay cash, check, or Cash App once the work is done.
Questions we hear a lot
Generally yes, if the brush grew on that property, you are outside city limits, no county burn ban is active, and you follow the TCEQ conditions: burn between one hour after sunrise and one hour before sunset, keep the fire downwind of or at least 300 feet from any neighboring structure, and skip high winds. Trash and construction debris never qualify.
Check the Texas A&M Forest Service burn ban map for today's status. Bans come and go with drought conditions, sometimes within the same month, so a blog post or a neighbor's word is the wrong source. The map shows every Texas county live and takes under a minute to check.
Only where no trash collection service is provided or authorized for the address, and even then tires, furniture, carpet, wire, appliances, and non-wood construction debris are illegal to burn everywhere. Most addresses around Trinity have a collection option, which rules trash burning out. We haul that material instead, starting at $95 for a single item.
On rural property outside city limits, leaves from your own trees fall under the same on-site vegetation exception as brush, with the same daylight, distance, and wind conditions, and only when no burn ban is active. Inside city limits, assume no, since cities generally prohibit open burning. Bag them, compost them, or have them hauled.
Then burning it is illegal, since the vegetation exception covers plant growth only. We handle mixed piles all the time: we load brush and junk together and price by the space the load fills in the trailer, from $95 for a single item up to $650 for a full load. Text photos to (936) 259-3200 for a same-day ballpark.