Oil Tank Under Stairs

Once a oil tank gets buried, it is not unusual that something gets built on top of the oil tank, for example, a garage, house, deck sunroom, or even a  porch.  The photo below shows an oil tank under some newly rebuilt stairs. Yes, it would have been wiser to remove the oil tank after the old stairs were dismantled and before the new stairs were installed, but it doesn't always work out that way. 

There are a couple of approaches you can use when a tank is beneath a structure.  One, you can excavate, clean, and fill the oil tank in place.  Two, you can remove the obstruction.  Three, you can support and work around the obstruction.

This photo series discusses option three (3) where we worked around the obstruction.  To remove an oil tank you have to excavate soils, typically you excavate soils on top and immediately around the oil tank so you can extract the tank.  When you have an obstruction,   

you do this and you also enrage the oil tank area outside the oil tank footprint.

Once you expose the oil tank you can evaluate how the oil tank is oriented.  In this case, 100% of the oil tank was under the stirs but the oil tank was not encountering any structural supports of the stairs.

So, you cut the oil tank open and clean it.  Now if the oil tank was too close to say structural support and removal could be possible but would require installing structural support (read expensive to perform) you can pivot and close the tank in place (Tank Closure In Place).