Oil Tank Testing in Delaware

Buying a house with an oil tank in Delaware

Lets say you want to buy a property  with an oil tank that is being used as the primary heat source, not uncommon.  Our advice would be to remove and replace the tank if it has no warranty as most buried heating oil tanks have surpassed their designed useful life and are at risk of leaking.

Unfortunately residential oil tanks do not have high tech leak detection systems like gas stations do.   So when a metal tank starts to leak, you have no idea, hence the need to test a tank in a real estate transaction.

The tank below was an in-use oil tank, for a property listed for sale.  Buyers were planning to convert the heat source to natural gas or even electric.  Removal was not possible before the sale so Curren was contracted to test the tank by testing soil around the tank.  This is kind of a pregnant not pregnant test, if you find oil in he ground next to the tank something happened.

The slide below shows a typical buried UST configuration.    The goal in testing an oil tank is to determine if any leaks have occurred.    You do this by testing the soil around and below the tank for oil.

In the photo below a GeoProbe drilling unit hammers hollow pipe in the ground around the buried tank.  You try and surround the tank with borings to look for the presence of oil in the soil.  It is a common approach on commercial sites and followed on residential sites as well.

On the right side of the photo (Below) you can see the clear tubes that contain soil that is extracted from the borings.

The photo below, although a different site shows the soil cores in greater detail.  The real advantage of this tank investigative boring test is you can visually log the soil geology.    Its also very informative, say only one sample location has oil?  Well that can point towards a minor localized leak.  Oil in all borings?  Well that is pointing to a tank system failure and a much larger problem.

You don't have to be a tank expert, we are licensed in Delaware, New Jersey & Pennsylvania.   

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