Oil Tank Removal Project

Our house was built around 1950. At that time most of the homes were heated with Fuel Oil. Anyway, when we moved in 21 years ago it was not a big deal that there was still an oil tank still in the ground, even though the furnace was now natural gas. Well nowadays it is a big deal. It’s kind of like having the Exxon Valdez parked in your backyard. The tank needs to be removed if you ever want to sell the home because the new purchasers cannot get home insurance; but that’s another story. Don’t get me started on insurance companies. Anyway, since we were aware that we had the biggest environmental disaster since the “1991 Kuwait Oil Field Sabotages by Iraqi Forces” situated under the lawn in our backyard we decided to have it removed. This first involved contacting a company and discussing how this could be done without destroying our garden. After much discussion and with some prompting from Kevin we decided to dig it out by hand. So, I located the tank and dipped it to see if there was any oil remaining. Luckily there was none and the tank was dry…. that was real good news. I also was able to determine that the tank was down about 6 1/2 ft. It was about a 250 galleon tank and was approximately 4 ft long and 3 1/2 ft in diameter. The soil was mostly clay so digging was fairly easy. To end a long story after a couple weeks of digging and a little ingenuity I got the tank out and it’s ready to haul to the scrap dealers this Friday.