Palister Base Works · Drumhollow & the Coal Vein · Measured work since 2002
The number moves or it doesn’t. Everything else is talk.
Palister opens and closes every job with the same instruments: a laser datum of the slab, gauges on every crack, strings on every wall. The number is the contract — deflection under twenty-five millimetres on a sound footing buys staples, deflection at the footing buys piers, and the rate sheet prices both before we start.
The rate sheets
Two sheets, every price on both
Coal Vein soil makes the decision binary — the wall bends or the ground sinks — so the pricing is binary too: by the foot for what we seal and drain, by the piece for what we stitch and pin. The $280 datum comes off whichever sheet your job lands on, and the quote is a ceiling.
By the foot — seal & drain
Urethane injection$91 / lin ft
Moving, weeping cracks — gasketed against moisture
Epoxy injection$103 / lin ft
Structural cracks — bonds back into one wall
Interior perimeter drain$56 / lin ft
Channel at the footing, daylit to the basin
Exterior membrane & dig$94 / lin ft
Open to footing, dimple board, stone backfill
By the piece — stitch & pin
Carbon-fiber staple$148 each
Epoxied across a bending wall, skimmed flush
Channel steel section$305 each
Slab to joist where the bow rides high
Helical pier to refusal$1,840 each
Bracketed under the footing, torque logged
Push pier, deep strata$1,980 each
Hydraulically driven where helicals will not sit
The datum file
How the number is made
Five steps, the same on a coal-company row house as on the hollow’s grain store — and the file they produce is the warranty, the invoice and the sales document all at once.
The datum
Laser profile of the slab, crack gauges dated and photographed, deflection strings on anything that leans. Two hours, and the raw readings are yours whatever happens next.
The verdict rule
Bend under 25 millimetres with a level footing reads staples. Drop at the footing with cracks tracking it reads piers. Water on the floor reads drain. The rule decides — the estimator writes down what it said.
The repair
From whichever sheet the verdict named, at the printed rate. One crew, one system at a time, and every torque, gauge and pressure goes into the file as the work happens, not afterwards.
The re-datum
Twelve months on, the same instruments, the same corners. The closing profile is printed beside the opening one — facing pages, same scale, no interpretation required.
The file
Bound and handed over: readings, verdict, rate sheet, logs, both profiles. It sells a Vein house faster than a fresh kitchen — buyers here ask for Palister files by name.
Drumhollow & the Coal Vein
Files closed, 2025 — 2026
Six jobs from last season’s cabinet, with the opening datum still clipped beside the closing one.
The facing-page profiles sold us before the price did: our slab’s low corner in black on the left, level within a millimetre on the right, printed like a lab result. When we refinanced, the bank’s surveyor photocopied the whole file instead of ordering his own inspection.
Two bids wanted the full pier circus. Palister’s datum showed a footing sitting still and a wall bending — staples, a third of the cost, and the re-datum a year later read identical. The difference between the bids was not price; it was that only one of them had measured anything.
Water every spring for nine years, three fixes that did not. Their datum traced it to a floor rising, not a wall leaking — the drain and the basin went in, and the file closes with the same two readings a year apart and the word: unchanged. I have never trusted a piece of paper more.
Warranties written against readings
Twenty-five years on piers, ten on staples, seals and drains — each one filed against the opening datum and renewed by the closing one. The warranty transfers with the deed, and the file transfers with the warranty. No adjectives were harmed in the making of this promise.
Why 25 millimetres — isn’t that arbitrary?
It is the line where a bowed block wall stops being stiffened usefully by staples alone and starts loading its footing unevenly — drawn from our own closed files, not a manufacturer’s chart. Below it, carbon carries the wall comfortably; above it, or with the footing dropping, piers are the only honest answer. The datum tells you which side of the line you are standing on.
What if the datum says nothing is moving?
Then the datum is the product: dated readings proving your foundation is sound, which in this hollow has settled house sales, halved insurance arguments and refuted two condemnation quotes we know of. You pay $280 and gain a document — that is the whole transaction, gladly.
How much of the yard does an exterior sheet cost me?
A four-foot working strip along the elevation, sheeted, hand-dug around anything worth saving, and reinstated with clean stone and topsoil. The interior sheet touches nothing outside at all. The moisture map says which sheet — or both — your water is actually on.
Do the rates ever change mid-job?
The sheets are reprinted when steel or resin moves, dated at the top, and the rate on your file is the rate you pay. The datum removes the excuse a moving quote usually hides behind — nobody meets an unexpected boulder when the boulder was mapped in week one.
Who reads the file when we sell?
Anyone you hand it to — that is the point of binding it. Surveyors here read a Palister file in twenty minutes and charge for an hour; the torque logs and facing profiles answer the questions an inspection would ask. The warranty transfer needs one signature: ours, on the page you send us.
Datums within the week · emergency water response in 48 hours · (555) 025-3301 · datum@palisterbase.example
Open the file
Tell us what has moved, what has wept or what has dropped. The $280 datum opens the file, comes off whichever rate sheet the verdict lands on, and the readings are yours either way. datum@palisterbase.example