This post could have happened weeks ago, but I hesitated and gave it a great deal of thought first. My family and friends said not to mention it to anybody, and initially I thought they were right.  However, I decided to take pictures and share what happened last month. I figured that since I did everything correctly and I documented and photographed the procedure, that I may as well show it.

    This may help other people who encounter the same thing, and it may save them a few thousand dollars.  So, here it is: While digging along the north side of the house's foundation to seal up a porous spot in the stone, Rob and I discovered an old in ground fuel oil tank.

      Now, everyone has heard the horror stories about in ground tanks and how they leak and have to be removed by hazardous material crews, and if they have leaked into the ground, that the DEC must be contacted and a costly cleanup will ensue. Well, those were my fears when we first uncovered the tank.  I looked online and found examples where this had cost home owners between $2000 - $4000 if the tank did not leak and from $10,000 - $90,000 if it did depending on the scope of contamination!

     Dreading the worst, we first stuck a long wooden rod down into the tank to see if it was empty. To my surprise the tank was still holding oil, as it came up wet with red fuel on the first 24 inches of the stick.  The first order of measure was to pump it dry. It took two trips, and SIX 55-gallon drums to remove all 300 gallons of fuel from the tank. The fuel was then pumped into my home tank and my sons home tank, we are currently heating our homes for free so far this season.  That alone saved me nearly $500 in fuel oil costs.

     I then assumed that since the tank had held all that oil for all those years, that it was most likely intact and had not leaked, so I researched a process known as oil tank "abandoning" where the tank remains in the ground, but the top is cut open, the inside is cleaned out and then the tank is filled with sand or gravel.  This is the approach I followed but with one small difference, we did not use sand OR gravel to fill it.

     Here you can see the tank as we discovered it:

After pumping it dry, I used a reciprocating saw to open the top of the tank:

Rob wiped and cleaned out the inside of the tank using rags and old t-shirts:

Once the inside was clean and dry, I went to  home depot and purchased two pallets (84 bags) of  concrete (80 lb bags).
   

Remember a few post ago I showed the cement mixer that was in the kitchen? Well we mixed all the concrete and filled the empty tank:
   

The reason we filled it with concrete was because we did not want ground water from heavy rains to enter the tank through the soil and fill the tank via  porous sand or gravel.  With concrete the tank is essentially just a very large rock below the ground now. 

Total cost for this tank abandonment project was $680  which includes Robs labor and the cost of the cement mixer which I can use again in future projects.