Best Oil Tank Sweep
We get asked all the time what is the best oil tank sweep?
Quite frankly, we think Curren Environmental does the best oil tank sweeps. Why? We are licensed in Delaware, New Jersey & Pennsylvania to remove oil tanks, we have removed tens of thousands of oil tanks and we do thousands of tank-related projects every year, so yes we know tanks.
Experience is priceless, people buying a $800 metal detector (Or that thing they carry around, as the uninformed say) and hoping that a buried tank is the only metal on a property deliver a poor quality service.
Since the 1990's Curren has been providing professional environmental services. Over the years we have seen many environmental businesses come and go. Regarding oil tank sweeps, we see people buying a $700 to $1,200 metal detector to do oil tank sweeps. That $200 metal detector oil tank sweep is a cheap way to not locate an underground oil tank. In fact, if you rely on a metal detector you are also hoping that an oil tank is the only piece of metal on the property. You are also hoping that concrete doesn't have any wire mesh and that no metal fences exist. Oh, and the soils won't have any naturally occurring metal and all buried metal utilities (sewer, water, gas) are not made of metal.
An example is the following oil tank sweep report that is only two (2) pages with no map and no photos in the report. If you read it, as it's only seven sentences with one spelling error, the oil tank sweep company determines the suspect tank in front of the property. Where in the front? Photo of the suspect location - nope just "in the front".
The above oil tank sweep report lacked photos, Curren requested a photo to document the tank location as the blue circle. The sweep determined that there is a likely tank, they suggest an exploratory dig, which is only a little less expensive than a tank removal. Curren gets hired to remove a tank.
The photo below is the area of the blue dot.
The area was excavated, and no tank was found. For this site, we couldn't even find rocks that had metal in them. We also have metal detector, but we do not use them for oil tank weeps and yes we used one and no we did not get a metal signature of a tank or anything in this area.
Metal detectors are non-discriminatory so any metal found gives a signal and can fool the user. We have dug up numerous supposed oil tanks that a metal detector found which were in fact not tanks. (See photo below of another big rock someone said was a tank).
Commercial sites have used geophysical equipment to scan for buried anomalies, the most versatile is Ground Penetrating Radar (GPR). GPR units cost tens of thousands of dollars and have different antennas with different frequencies depending on what you are scanning. The advantage of GPR is you get an image on the unit screen so you can see what is below ground. You see the radar will reflect off a tank and bounce back to the cart. Don't get me wrong the image is not something you will see on a TV crime show, but to the trained user. That mountain image below, well that is a tank, the image is distinct. We can also verify with a metal detector, but would not use a metal detector as the sole technology, just too unreliable.
This rather long tank was not found by a metal detector, because of the depth of the tank and because pavers were on top of the ground which diminished the signal.
The best oil tank sweep uses the best technology, and the technician has removed tanks so they know the tanks. The best technology is a broad term but really means using multiple technologies, hence why a GPR-located image can be verified that its metal with a magnetometer.
Here is a photo series of an oil tank sweep, Curren located an oil tank in the front yard for a buyer. The property owner was there and was surprised an oil tank was found in the front yard. We asked him how many tanks he has removed, and "not many" was the response. We explained that there was no standard for where the oil tanks were buried, and could be on any side of the house (front, backyard, side yard). In this case, the oil tank was between the driveway and the front yard. Since we were working for the buyer we couldn't paint the location of the tank so we marked it out with orange cones. Note the tank is under the sidewalk.
The next photo shows the tank being excavated and no it is not buried that shallow.
You see in this photo that the top of the oil tank is several feet deep.
Aside from using a multitude of technology to perform an oil tank sweep, you want the technician to have experience with removing tanks, so the company doing the sweep should also remove tanks. Why?
How can you be good at finding oil tanks if you haven't removed tanks? There really is no rhyme or reason as to oil tank placement, so working with a company that does oil tank tweeps and removes tanks lends the experience you need.
Case in point, the other photo series shows you an oil tank next to a house. Well, you can't even see the house in this photo!
What happens if you find an oil tank? I know everyone doesn't want us to find a tank, but we get hired to look for them. So when we find a oil tank, we provide the costs to remove the oil tank with the report. We are licensed for oil tank work in NJ, PA & DE, so we can provide costs for the work. 60% of the time the owner hires us, the other 40%, well the owner is upset that we found a tank.
In realty, it does not matter if Curren gets hired to remove the oil tank or not. The important thing is a tank was found, the property owner is aware and has costs to address the tank. You just want the oil tank removed and tested, don't walk away from the property after we find an oil tank, because the next property could have a tank. Unless of course, the owner refuses to remove the tank, then consider ending the contract, nobody needs a $100,000 cleanup.
We locate oil tanks, remove oil tanks, test oil tanks and remediate and have been doing it for over 20 years. Call the experts.
888-301-1050
