Slick Inspection

Shortly after moving into our first house, I found a copper tube in the basement with the metal bent over to seal it and another tube in the wall close by that looked like a match. I asked several friends if they knew what it was and they didn’t. Being new to home ownership and not knowing exactly what it was, I cut it off one day only to find that it must have been the old oil tank line into the furnace. Lucky me, my tank had been decommissioned several years prior. It could have been a disaster though instead of only a few drops of oil spilling onto the floor.

When I looked through my home inspection paperwork, I found that there wasn’t a thing even mentioning it. The only way I even knew it was decommissioned was by finding some papers in an old drawer in the basement. I was reminded of how lucky I was when I recently read an article in the June 2007 edition of This Old House titled Not Too Slick. It’s an article about what can happen when you buy an old house where the tank (in this case it was one pushing 75 years old) hasn’t been decommissioned. According to the article, most tanks last 10-50 years, so theirs went way beyond the call of duty before the oil started leaking into their basement and their neighbor’s property. The owner ended up spending over $160,000 in legal fees and fighting with insurance companies before they met their demands and footed the bill for a cleanup job costing over $500,000. Gulp, gasp, *#$@%. Their home inspector detected a slight leak which was written off as not a big deal by the real estate agent, closing attorney and the guy who answered the phone at the oil company. He told them the seller had a policy on the tank that transferred to them with the sale of the house. Bologna! After the oil leached into the ground water and the neighbor’s property they were told that the coverage was voided.

Here are a few tips so you don’t get greased:

1.Check to see if an oil tank has ever been on the property.

2.If so, see if the tank has been decommissioned (you should have a certificate if it has).

3.If you are considering buying a house with a tank that has not been decommissioned, then check the details of your insurance policy because they don’t all cover damages related to oil tanks.

4.Use the oil tank that hasn’t been decommissioned to leverage the price of the house during negotiations.

5.Last but by no means least, if the property has a tank on it that hasn’t been decommissioned, get it done ASAP.