About to buy home with oil tank + gas lines; trying to navigate options??

[Worn Out Retread]

The right real estate agent can save you a bundle. We had a great agent that pointed out every flaw that she saw in houses that we looked at. Yes, she was acting as our agent and was going to be paid out of the price of the house. She saved us a lot of inspection fees for inspections of houses that "looked ok" to us but not ok to her. We ended up buying a house of lower price but better suited to us.

She was quite knowledgeable about the heating and electrical systems that we saw in our search for a house. Her estimates for changing furnaces, roofs and electrical upgrades were pretty well on the money for the area that we were looking at. (We made some enquiries ourselves)

[salty]

Having an old tank removed from a basement is not very expensive. If it has oil in it, the oil and scrap value of the tank may be worth enough to cover the cost.

[David Nebenzahl]

On 5/20/2008 7:02 AM [e-mail] spake thus:

The scrap value of the tank I can see, but are you saying they can salvage the oil? What do they do with it? Presumably, it wouldn't be considered fit for burning, would it? (At least I wouldn't want it going into my burner, after sitting there for gawd only knows how many years.)

[salty]

Oil companies do this all the time. I don't know, but I "guess" they run it through some rudimentay filtering to remove sediment. I know that when they replace a tank, they temporarily pump the old tank's contents out, and then put it back into the new tank, so they must have this worked out.

I know a guy who used to own a diesel Mercedes. When anyone he know was selling a house, converting to gas, or otherwise having unwanted oil, he would buy it from them for pennies on the dollar, and pump it into jerry cans, and his car's tank to transfer it home. It would sometimes take him many trips at 30-40 or so gallons per. He had a portable electric pump for the purpose. He had a couple of old tanks in his barn for storage of his treasure. It wasn't legal or dyed, but it seemed to work just fine in his car.

[Paul M. Eldridge]

I refer you to Chapter 16 of:

I refer you to Chapters 1, 2, 5, 6 and 7 of:

A direct quote from another branch of this very same thread:

--- Begin Quote ---

"The right real estate agent can save you a bundle. We had a great agent that pointed out every flaw that she saw in houses that we looked at. Yes, she was acting as our agent and was going to be paid out of the price of the house. She saved us a lot of inspection fees for inspections of houses that "looked ok" to us but not ok to her. We ended up buying a house of lower price but better suited to us."

"She was quite knowledgeable about the heating and electrical systems that we saw in our search for a house. Her estimates for changing furnaces, roofs and electrical upgrades were pretty well on the money for the area that we were looking at. (We made some enquiries ourselves)"

[Boden]

Having had the excitement of one gas explosion I'd rather not experience another.

[hallerb]

Well since natural gas is the majority of home heating nationwide, its explosion rate is very low, or multiple homes would go boom daily:(

Do you hve electric? it must cause many more home fires yearly

[Worn Out Retread]

It isn't expensive if the tank doesn't have to be cut into pieces to get it out of the house.....our estimate when we contemplated such a thing was several hundred dollars. Luckily, we had a friend qualified to do such work.

[salty]

I can't imagine that cutting a tank up with a sawsall would take very long. My house does not have an outside access to the basement, but by taking off the railing on the basement stairs, it can easily go up the stairs and out through the kitchen in one piece.

[Worn Out Retread]

That was not possible in my house and the working space was limited.