PeachParts Mercedes-Benz Forum - View Single Post

t walgamuth · #12 02-27-2008, 08:52 PM

I found 2500 gallons....yes, I am not kidding....of heating oil in a tank in the basement of my office building. I assumed and the previous owner assumed the tank was empty, but it was full!

So I wanted only to get the tank out of my building so I could rent the space for storage.

So I called the fuel sales places and asked if they wanted to buy it. They asked how long it had set and I said....as near as i can tell maybe 40 years. When they stopped laughing they said I needed to call a service that takes away dangerous liquids.

I said.....&*%$@#* That.

After doing some basic research I found the the difference between #1 heating oil and diesel is about nil.

So we took a sample off the bottom and found it clear. (Cloudy appearance means the presence of bacteria). So next thing was to find a way to pump it out and burn it in my truck and three diesel cars!

HOT DAMN!

A demolition contractor friend offered a fuel pump (marked farm bureau co op), I paid a handy man to hook it up and sit it out in the alley next to my buidling, I rigged up a double filter and soon I had pulled up the 91 sdl and filled the tank. I took a trip on the fuel and the car never missed a beat!

Visions of three years supply of cheap (free) fuel floated above my head....Man, I am in heaven!.....I must be the luckiest SOB alive (I thought).

The next morning as I was coming in to work I discovered a small crowd outside my building looking at my pump......the city engineer, the fire inspector, and the federal marshalls who guard the federal court building next door.

Heee hee!

It turns out the marshalls smelled the fuel oil and immediately assumed it was a terrorist threat. (A few years before someone, still at large, had tried to blow up our courthouse which is located on the other side of my building with a pickup truck loaded with fertilizer and, you guessed it, fuel oil)

So the next day I get a terse letter from the city engineer ordering me to have the pump, the tank and the fuel all out in three days! (Never mind that that was completely impossible). So I asked her for a little more time and she gave me ten days on the fuel and pump and 45 days on the tank, IIRC.

&*%$#@!!! Drat, my cheap fuel plan is up in smoke!

So my contractor friend (the one who loaned me the pump) bought the fuel for $.75 /gallon (at that time the price was 'bout $2 at the pump).

And that was about enough to pay a contractor to come and cut up the tank and remove it, so I guess it didn't work out all that bad in the end.

Damnnn, though, three years worth of free fuel would have been sweet!

(I would still be using it!)

Tom W