Underground Oil Tank

I don’t think any three words strike terror in the hearts of homebuyers like “underground oil tank.” With good reason. I’ve heard a ton of horror stories, one involved jacking up an old farmhouse and digging out hundreds of tons of contaminated dirt- to the tune of several hundred thousand dollars. Another was just an oil tank removal that set the young homeowners back $5k, nothing to scoff at, but not several hundred thousand either. So, when my husband and I found the perfect home, that just so happened to have an underground tank, I didn’t know what to expect. What if we couldn’t afford the remediation? That would mean losing the house we had waited six long years to buy.

With such a wide range of outcomes, I thought I’d share my story. We began by contacting Joe Green from Quick Environmental. They came out and took soil samples to see if, or how much, the tank had leaked over the years. This information helps them come up with a cost estimate for the removal of the tank and the contaminated dirt. We were lucky and only had a small leak, I believe it was approximately six tons of dirt that
had to be removed. Unfortunately, that set us back about $14k. Since we knew this was an issue before closing, we were able to get a credit from the seller that covered quite a bit of the cost.

The next step was installing a new above ground tank. Again, there are a range of options here (indoor, outdoor, single-walled, double-walled.) We decided to go with a Roth tank (double-walled) installed in our basement. It set us back about $2k. Again, the credit we received at closing helped a little, but we end up paying about $6k out of pocket in total.

None of this is particularly fun. I’d rather spend that $6k on renovations and new furniture, but it had to be done. The problem was never going to go away, really, it would only get worse, so I’m glad we got it taken care of when we did.

Post any questions you have here, and I’d be happy to answer them the best that I can!