Abandoning a buried oil tank?

The house we're buying has the tank buried for about 40 + years. as far as we know it's not leaking and our lawyer advised against the pressure test b/c that in fact can cause leakage and the seller could hold us liable.

So he advised us to ask for a letter from their oil company saying there wasn't excessive usage i(basically implying that it doesn't leak) problem may be that she didn't use the same company consistently. the lawyer said that if we still want the house which we do, we should replace the tank upon moving in...

So my question is two fold...

1.) has anyone had experience buying a house with a buried tank and what did you do?

2.) Has anyone offically abadoned a tank on their property? If so what did it ential and cost?

we had the oil tank removed from our property, after we had our system converted to gas. it did NOT cost thousands of dollars...I think it cost about $1200.
Let me know if you want the name 0f my guy.

We are buying a house with a buried oil tank also. The first thing we are doing when we move in is cap the oil tank that is in the ground and have a new one put in above the ground. The new oil tank can either go outside or in the basement.

My parents just had this done with their house too, I think it cost them around $1,200. I feel that it is worth it! I don't want to deal with the oil tank leaking!! Yuck!!

Good Luck! I hope I helped!

Well..we do have a gas stove...maybe gas heating would be overall more cost effective...

Any pros or cons of gas heat?

Just wanted to say I think you have a good lawyer for checking into the oil tank thing and covering you...

DH and I bought a house with an inground oil tank and after excessive use we were then told our tank is leaning. (Of course the seller never told us about this problem).

We priced around and whoever performs the service for you will abandon the tank and you will have to fill out the appropriate paperwork with the town. Ours costs $1800 to abandon the inground tank, and place a new tank above ground. We felt like we were given a great price compared to what other people were charging. Also wanted to add make sure you have an engineer (provided by the oil company) come survey the house prior to performing the work so they can tell you exactly the work involved and where the lines go etc.

did the environmental guys come and do soil tests?
Were you fined for the leak?

We didn't have the environmental guys come to the house. Our main issue was that we were getting filled up with oil and running out of heat/water very quickly.

They didn't fine us b/c we were the new homeowners and we only discovered the problem during our 1st winter in the house.

We had an inground oil tank abandoned and filled with foam- the more expensive but less invasive of the choices. We then had a new outside oil tank put in above ground. We also had to get a shed around the oil tank to protect it. All said and done: $2220 !!!! The shed cost around 400. If you have an inground tank you have to have it abandoned properly. But there is a tax credit- I think 500$ We used Suburban Oil- they were very efficient. Let me know if you need anymore information...we did a lot of research on this!

We knew going into the house that we would eventually replace it- we went with sooner rather than later because if it does leak you can have a major environmental clean up on your hands. Our oil contract DID NOT cover the cost- we did.
Good luck.