retired heating oil tank - disposal options?

retired heating oil tank - disposal options?

fume risks vs method of deconstruction....

What options are there to cut it up to ease moving it and disposing of it?

Are there regs to be aware of?

TIA

Jim K

Reply to
Jim K
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Steel, plastic? E-bay.

Reply to
Onetap

angle grinder after emptying it. If prissy fill it with water first oil will float to the top and spill out

yes, ignore them

Reply to
The Natural Philosopher

retired heating oil tank - disposal options?

If steel, leave it in the front garden and it will magically disappear overnight :-)

Mike

Reply to
Muddymike

Assuming steel, I read somewhere that a hammer and cold-chisel could be safely used for this. Sounds like hard work to me.

I know of someone currently selling a house with a couple of 1000 litre(ish) unbunded steel diesel tanks in an outbuilding. Only slightly rusty. I'm wondering whether these are more of a liability than a selling point.

Reply to
MrWeld

Steel. Leaks. No eBay.

Jim K

Reply to
Jim K

Ring the local scrap merchants, they might come and get it.

I left mine at a scrap merchant, but I happened to have something to move it with.

Reply to
Michael Chare

How big? The galvanised water tank that I've just repurposed as a water butt is 3 x 3 x 2'6 (125 gallon, 600 l ish) and is almost to heavy for a one man handle, besides the size. It's made of sheet steel about 1/8" thick.

Heating oil isn't that flamable, angle grinder but obviously keeping a look out ...

Regs, donno about the tank. Disposal of the remaining oil, water and s**te in the bottom might be "regulated". Unless you have a handy bit of "waste ground" on your property not sure what you could do with it. Waste (engine) oil tank at a local HWRC? A garage probably won't want it as they tend to burn the old engine oil to heat the garage.

Reply to
Dave Liquorice

The oil may not be easily ignited, but the fumes can detonate quite easily.

I had a couple of big tanks demolished years ago, 3/8" styeel ISTR. They us ed pneumatic hammers and chisels. hey blew huge quantities of air through i t with a pneumatic induction device, both to dissipate any fumes amd to kee p a breathable atmosphere, since they were working inside the tanks.

I think I'd drain it, knock a hole in it to ventilate it, then hammer and bolster or get a pneumatic nibbler.

I wouldn't go near it with a grinder.

Reply to
Onetap

Iground mine

flashpoint of diesel is very high

Reply to
The Natural Philosopher

Not that easily but I wouldn't want to bet that the friction heat and sparks from vigorous angle grinding couldn't get you into trouble.

But not quite high enough to be certain that you won't end up with an explosive fuel air mixture if you work at it long and hard enough showering in sufficient sparks. Draining it of oil and then filling it with water before cutting the top off provides plenty of heat shunting and a much smaller void to fill with fuel air mix.

It is slightly odd not to either run it to empty before trying to dispose of it or pumping the existing oil to the new replacement tank.

If it failed like mine by accumulated water in the base rusting it from inside you might find that it will fall apart when you try to lift it = job done just mind your feet in case it goes suddenly.

Or failing that whack it with a chisel along the weakest leak failure line. Mine looked perfect from the outside but was actually wafer thin on three sides about 1cm up from the bottom welds. Pretty much it was rust held together by decades of layers of Hammerite on the outside!

It looked almost perfect until we tried to move it. I knew it was starting to leak and also getting worse fairly rapidly. It came as a bit of a surprise to my friends when it fell apart on lifting.

Reply to
Martin Brown

But a very high risk of mixing angle grinder and water.

Reply to
Adrian

Many recycle centres have a place you can tip waste oil. Sump oil I think but no-one would know.

Reply to
harryagain

Heating oil, kerosene, parrafin, 28 sec oil not diesel, 35 sec oil.

A open room temp container of parrafin needs a "wick" and the wick to be directly lit to burn.

Not tried diesel like the above but I did try it as a bonfire accelerant once, it did help once going but getting it going wasn't easy. Seem to remember having to get the gas weed burner blasting at the diesel soaked materials. A match wasn't much use but would have been fine for parrafin.

Never, ever try the above with petrol... WHUMMPFFFF where did my eye brows go?

Reply to
Dave Liquorice

Quite so, that's what I meant. I think you'd probaby get away with it, but it's not the sort of thing I'd bet my life on.

Reply to
Onetap

If the ratio is within the correct range. A tank will be filled mostly with fuel vapour and little air.

Keeping the air breathable was probably the primary reason as they where using hammer and chisel. And what had been in them, bunker oil, diesel, kerosene, petrol?

I'd be *VERY* wary of anything that had had petrol in it.

So making a nice fuel air mixture. B-)

Nibbler might be OK if you can get one that will handle 1/8" steel. Hammer and bolster would be hard work and bloody noisey...

Almost filling with water then cutting the top off with a grinder is probably the safest. Then drain some of the water and cut again just above the water/oil line, repeat as required.

Reply to
Dave Liquorice

Not just the eyebrows. Petrol vapour runs along the ground and there are plenty of excellent YouTube videos of how *NOT* to light a bonfire.

I particularly like the one that exploded and the one that set the entire field on fire including the proto-Darwin awardees trousers.

Reply to
Martin Brown

It was both, either one would kill you.

They were working in a tank, so there was a hazard from asphyxiation due to heavier-than-air gases and vapours and then the explosion hazard of the fumes. I think the tank had been emptied for several years, but don't recall the details. There were detectors for both O2 concentration and flammable gases throughout.

The tanks had contained red diesel type heating oil (ClassD?). ,

It leaks, so it has already got one ;-). If it has corroded along the water line, as someone described above, that opening should be easily enlarged.

By ventilate, i meant leave open for days/weeks, but forgot to say that.

Noisy; I don't think thin steel would be hard to cut.

I've cut up a domestic galvanized water tank with a jig saw (very easy) due to the spark risk in the loft; I'd prefer something with pneumatic power for this.

Reply to
Onetap

45 degrees C i believe, marine diesel is 55,

Many years ago, i was helping the boss modify one of the big wreckers, we were putting in a lifting steering axle to increase the weight capacity, And right where the pneumatic cylinders on one side needed to go the original fuel tank was mounted, the standpipe for the fuel pickup had come off years ago, and as the bodywork for the wrecker had been added, it left no way to drop the tank and get it out, so another fuel tank was fitted up between the flight legs, the plumbing to the engine moved over, and the original tank forgotten about until we really needed to remove it,

So the boss grabbed the gas axe, and sliced the top half off so we could pull the bottom half out under the bodywork, then drop the top and pull that out, He said noticed once he was about 3/4 of the way round, the bottom half was sagging down an awful lot, but of course he didnt think to stop an investigate, and it wasnt until he cut the last side that it fell with a thunk and splashed us all, bloody thing still had about 150 litres of diesel in it and had been showered with sparks and blobs of molten metal.

I bet if we'd have known the tank had fuel in it, it'd have lit off :)

Reply to
Gazz

Interestingly enough, one building that I have done work on had compartments with a non-combustible liquid with a potentially flammable gas and air mix above. When designing for equipment to go in there, the concern was that once the liquid level was low enough or while it was still high enough, the building could withstand a deflagration, but there was a small band (nearly full of liquid) where the volume of gas was high enough, but the volume to dissipate the overpressure was small enough, that the building could crack. I don't know exactly how that worked, but they'd calculated it all very carefully.

SteveW

Reply to
SteveW

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