Monday, May 19, 2008

275 Gallons of Oil

I got the news last week that our old oil furnace is shot. That's a pain, but at least we can take a serious look at a high efficiency gas system. One big headache though is that the oil company topped off our tank around the time their technician discovered the problem with our old furnace, so I've got 275 gallons of oil sitting in my basement. That's a pretty large sunk cost. If I can't get rid of it and make some money back in the process, as a rational economic actor, it would make a big difference in my total cost of ownership calculations. Anyhow, anyone have any experience in getting this much oil out of your house? One problem is that you can't just let Earl start siphoning it into Jerry Cans without risking him turning the basement into a Superfund site.

2 comments:

benshead said...

Sorry to hear that. We had the same news two years ago and ended up staying with oil. That may have been a mistake, although I enjoy being able to burn biodiesel...

I'm not sure how to do it, but if we could come up with a way to extract and transport it, we might be willing to take it off your hands.

Heck, it would only be 15 trips with 10 Jerry cans, by my sophisticated calculations...

Oh, 'hi, long time no see', btw...

Mr. Lauer said...

Hey Tom,
Last fall we converted from oil to gas. You should be able to get a quote where the company installing the new furnace will also decommission your old oil tank, including pumping out any oil in the tank.

Tim