Posted by David Sherman on Tuesday, June 05, 2007 at 18:57:04 :
I just discovered that my house still has an old underground oil tank next to it. there's a little bit of oil, water and sludge in it. I don't want to remove it, but I also don't want it to rust through, collapse, and create a sink hole. The ground around it has already settled a bit, though I don't know if that's from an old buried stump rotting, a broken sewer main, or a rusted out oil tank. The topsoil has already been removed from the yard, so it would be easy to hand-dig down to the top of the tank. I'm thinking of cutting a big hole in the top and then filling it up with dirt. I know there are profe$$ional oil tank decomi$$ioning outfits that fill them with sand or foam, but at this point my choice is betweeen leaving it like it is, and filling it with dirt. I don't want to spend any money on it. My question is, do you think it would be safe to cut a hole in it with a torch? I tend to think not, but I don't know if diesel fumes in a tank will explode or not. How about a sawzall, which could still make sparks?
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