[katherine4]

Hello, We are trying to purchase a home in the northeast kingdom of Vermont. The seller says that there is no buried oil tank on the property, but my husband is concerned that there could be. (He didn't see any signs of it, but he's still concerned about the possibility).

Does anyone have any knowledge about how we might purchase this property but also protect ourselves should it come to light down the road that there is a buried tank? Is there insurance one can buy for this, for example? I'm wondering if anyone else has dealt with this and how it should be handled.


Thank you!

[Wells5]

Does the house have an oil burner? If it does, is the fuel oil tank in the basement? If there is no oil tank, then you can assume that there is a buried tank somewhere on the property but near the house.

If one of the previous owners replaced a buried tank years ago with a basement tank and didn't bother to remove the buried tank, I don't think that you will have anything to worry about even in "The Peoples Republic of Vermont."

Then again, maybe?

[katherine4]

There is an oil tank above ground in the garage, but that doesn't convince my husband that there isn't a buried one lurking elsewhere on the property.

"The Peoples Republic of Vermont" - I like that!! And you're so right.

[joe moving]

You could do a tank sweep for the logical locations. A company that pulls tanks out may also do the tank sweep service.

[DanBev]

A metal detector would locate it by out line

[Sierrajeff]

I'm not sure I get the concern; if the owners say there isn't one, and there's no evidence of one, then there's little chance that one exists...

And not to sound callous, but even if one exists, *and* it's full of oil, *and* has a leak... unless it starts affecting someone down-gradient, who then notices, and then complains, and then it's worked back to your hypothetical leaky underground tank... what's the issue?

In any event, if you really want to diligence it - is there a mysterious pipe in the basement that inexplicably goes from the furnace to and through a wall of the basement? Or if not, is there a mysterious patch in the basement wall, proximate to the furnace (where a pipe maybe used to go through the wall? Unless you see something like that, it becomes increasingly hard to think that there might be a tank there that no one knows about.

[harpoonalt]

In ground oil tanks are very rare in VT. I'd be in the Don't worry camp!

[naadarien]

Ground tanks are a required disclosure that the owner must identify (if they have any knowledge). They could be sued by you if you found their statements of the condition of the property to be false.

Nobody wants them underground though. Way more costly to manage. In the NEK, no one has the big bucks to be bothered.