[Shop-talk] New house / underground oil tank

[Brian Kennedy]

Interesting. Actually, it is under a deck. They did pump it out, but I'm not
sure how much sludge they removed. It had been inspected earlier for leakage.
I'm not sure what they did to determine there was no leakage. You'd surely
want to check the local laws. I agree that in the long term, removing it is
the better thing to do. I think that was offered as an option, but the cost of
replacing the deck led us to Plan B.
Brian K
On Jul 25, 2011, at 4:14 PM, David Scheidt wrote:

> On Mon, Jul 25, 2011 at 6:44 AM, Brian Kennedy <kennedybc at comcast.net>
wrote:
>> I had an underground oil tank for few years in OR. Heating bills were
going
>> out of sight, so I switched to a heat pump and had them fill the tank with
>> sand. I sold the pumped out oil to a friend of a friend. Fortunately, this
one
>> didn't leak, but I did hear a horror story or two about what happens if
they
>> do leak. Sure glad it's gone.
>
> It's generally not legal to do that.  typical abondon in place
> procedure involves cutting large hole in the top, removing the sludge,
> steam cleaning, and then back filling.  Plus lots of exploratory well
> drilling, to verify it didn't leak.  It's almost always cheaper to
> remove it.   Only exceptions are where someone's done something
> stupid, like build on top of it.  Rules vary by state, and even if
> what you did was legal when you did, you may still have to remove it
> before you can sell, if the rules have changed (or you simply can't
> find a buyer who can get a mortgage for a property with potential
> liabilities for ground water pollution.)
>
>> Brian K
>>
>> On Jul 24, 2011, at 4:04 PM, Aric wrote:
>>
>>> Howdy all, and sorry for not paying attention when this topic went
through
>> a
>>> couple months ago; I didn't realize we'd be buying a house or that it
would
>>> have an underground oil tank.
>>>
>>> In a nutshell, I just found out yesterday that the house we're closing on
>> on
>>> Friday has a 1000 gallon underground tank of unknown (to me) age and
can't
>>> for the life of me remember what the list had to say on the subject of
>>> underground tanks.  I recall something about old ones being potentially
>> very
>>> costly if they leak and that insurance for that sort of thing may or may
>> not
>>> be available.
>>>
>>> Mind refreshing my memory as to the gist of the earlier discussion?
>>>
>>> And for shop content, there's a dilapidated 30'x40' workshop on the
>> property
>>> that we'll be fixing up and putting a second floor on for storage space.
>>>
>>> Thanks,
>>>
>>> -aric.
>> ___
>>
>
>
>
> --
> David Scheidt
> dmscheidt at gmail.com