Old Oil Tank buried in yard

Don't know how big it is. It has a couple of pipes or whatever that come out of the ground a few inches. I do not know what the ports are. Maybe that's the part above the ground. I think the part above the ground is how you would fill it.

Yes, the pipes coming out of the ground are the fill ports. I'd have Bubba come and remove it too, but now since you've opened the door (the bank knows it's there) you might have to have a tank remover do it and test the ground like 36fam said. If you have any paperwork saying that the tank was filled and is inert, that may satisfy the bank or the home inspector.

I would call a bank as if you were buying the house (instead of selling it) and see what they have to say about it causing a problem getting a mortgage or not.

We bought our house in '77, and used oil heat and the buried 200 gallon tank that was there for several years. The old furnace finally was giving us too many problems and the natural gas pipeline was only a couple miles away and was supposed to be extended past our house very soon, so we replaced the oil furnace with a new propane one and central air.

Two propane furnaces and twenty plus years later, the natural gas pipeline is still the same two miles away.

When we switched from oil heat, we ran the tank dry before pulling the old furnace, and dug down to expose the top of the tank. Then I cut a hole a couple feet long and about a foot wide from the top surface, and filled the tank with sand, pushing it out to the sides with a 2x4 as we filled it to make sure we were filling it completely. Figured that made it completely safe from being a cave-in hazard, and there was virtually no residual oil remaining, and what little there was was buried about four feet deep at the bottom of the tank.

Looking back now, we would probably have been wiser to have the tank removed at the time. Circumstances have made people much more aware of the environmental risks, real or imagined, since those days.

You could probably probe with a long metal rod going down through the filler pipe that is sticking up to see whether your tank was drained and filled. I'd say if it was, it doesn't present any real danger from an environmental or safety standpoint. It might still be worth having it removed from a resale value standpoint. I don't know what the legal requirements may be, so that would probably be the first thing to explore. A removal that's mandated by the court after a lawsuit will certainly be the most expensive one imaginable.

Put a clause in that states as is where is. I purchased a home about 10 years ago and the septic tank on it runs to a little ditch along the property line. This was a big sticking point to some other people who wanted to have the seller fix it. Long story short I got the house with the septic as is for around 20K cheaper than what they were asking for and it turns out that when I plan on moving it this year and have a legal septic along with a lateral field I will still be around 12K ahead.

And convert the tank into a smoker!