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Heating oil

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Sydsmith
Extremely Wise Man
Extremely Wise Man
Posts: 1369
Joined: Sun Feb 14, 2016 11:15 pm
Location: Aberystwyth Wales

Heating oil

Post by Sydsmith »

A little word of caution. I look after our local Church and maintain the heating oil supply, and like hundreds of others as oil is very cheap, I had the tank filled right up.

Our tank was a 15 years old plastic Titan tank with a 10 year warranty, it was situated on the north side of the church protected by a tall fence from the sun, so we had no reason to suspect its reliability, however two weeks after it was filled someone smelled oil and it turned out we had a spill, at first I though around 3-400 litres.

The Church is bordered by a river and as we are insured I called the insurers, to cut a long story short, it turned out that the tank had a 2 foot crack just below the centre line, fortunately it was only dripping from the crack and fast action to empty the tank saved the day.

It turned out we lost just 100 litres but the cost so far has exceeded £5,000, and they have only cleaned up the mess and removed the contaminated stuff from site, a new tank and reinstating it will cost another £5,000.

It seems 15 years is about the life of a plastic oil tank. If you have a plastic tank do check on it and more important check what your insurance says, the excess on our policy is £200 but for oil spills £500 and they will not pay for a new tank, so we are facing an uninsured cost of around £2,000.

Had the whole contents been lost the cost could have exceeded £20,000. You have been warned. Syd

Sydsmith
Extremely Wise Man
Extremely Wise Man
Posts: 1369
Joined: Sun Feb 14, 2016 11:15 pm
Location: Aberystwyth Wales

Re: Heating oil

Post by Sydsmith »

Just had the bad news that a new tank has to be bunded and will cost around £1800 for a 2500 litre replacement :(

I should say the reason the spill was over estimated was because the tank had collapsed outwards making the width at the centre much larger so the gauge read some 2-3 inches lower that the true level, that only came to light when the tank was emptied and we could tell how much was left.

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