Category: Blog

When you choose Simple Tank for your soil services you are getting more than just a soil test. Simple Tank will be able to determine any leaks, tests, and services at a fixed price upfront. There are no surprise costs for the work Simple Tank conducts. Invest in a company that gives you the numbers and sticks to them. Simple Tank values the excellence of their premiere soil testing and providing the best services at a fixed cost to their consumers.

• Hiring a professional from Simple Tank for soil samples provides you with soil delineation for a fixed price and a guarantee of excellence.

Soil testing is a relatively simple process and most companies provide consumers with cut and dry results. While it is great to receive an upfront yes or no answer, to have further details could save you money in the long run by providing you with more useful information.

For example, if we run a test of your soil and find that it is contaminated, we will run an additional test called soil delineation.

What Is Soil Delineation?

Simple Tank Services will be able to determine how deep the contamination has spread and how wide the contaminants are located. Contaminants are unpredictable in how they spread throughout the soil, but they will not simply just sink into the earth and remain straight down from the source. Simple Tank will be able to provide you with where exactly the contaminants have spread.

You may now be curious at how much soil delineation costs. Other companies offer this service with upfront costs in the thousands. Simple Tank has perfected their algorithm and understands the importance of affordability to receive this service, making it available for only $599.

Will I Know If Groundwater Is Affected?

Simple Tank’s soil delineation will be able to determine if your groundwater is being affected by contamination. Having groundwater that is polluted can cause some vulnerabilities. This can lead to determining which wells are safer to drink from than others.

How Can Simple Tank Afford To Offer Soil Delineation For Less?

The equipment is made readily available. Soil testing is not done by hand and equipment is already brought to the testing site, meaning the necessary tools are already in the location to the job. The Simple Tank employee is experienced and trained in soil delineation, as part of their extensive training through Simple Tank. Everything is done on site.

The owners of Simple Tank Services have been pulling oil tanks for a combined 75+ years! With all this experience, they have seen every scenario play out when it comes to the ProGuard warranty program. In the blog post we will cover the top 6 problems with their coverage program. We’ll go over whether it’s really the top oil tank insurance NJ has to offer.

1 – Confusing – We believe that the program is very confusing to understand. They have different programs and costs depending on if you “think” you may want to remove your tank at some point or if you don’t. They call this voluntary and involuntary pull program. If you decide you want to remove your tank with knowledge that their is a leak, this is considered a voluntary pull. You must be on their voluntary pull program for at least one year.

2 – High Deductible – If you decide to pull your oil tank voluntarily and there is a claim, your deductible will be $3,500.00 plus $500 oversight fee. The oversight fee covers for them to send a representative to your site the day the tank is removed.

3 – Stuck with Oil – If you have a claim, you are forced to install a new above ground tank so that the fuel dealer can deliver oil to you for a minimum of 12 months. After this period you can convert to gas if you want to. DO NOT CONVERT TO GAS BEFORE PULLING YOUR TANK. This will VOID your warranty!

4 – Auto Delivery – You are forced to stick with the oil provider that sold you the policy and you MUST stay on automatic delivery. This means you can’t price shop for the lowest possible oil price. If the dealer decides to raise their prices, you are stuck paying that amount.

5 – No Third Party – If there is a claim and the oil is impacting third party (ground water and off site soil) you are not covered. If you have owned your property at least 12 years and have had the same insurance policy, you may be covered through your homeowner’s insurance.

6 – Yearly Payment – They only give you one option to pay and that is one payment for the year. They do no offer monthly payments.

 

If you are interested in getting coverage for your active underground heating oil tank, please contact us about Simple Guard! Our warranty program is the answer to all the problems with ProGuard!

This is a very important question for anyone who has an oil tank, especially if you are planning on removing it. You will want to be asking this question to yourself when you are shopping around for an oil tank contractor. If you do not, you will be making a mistake. Contractors are not always created the same and you will want a contractor that is honest about what needs to be done on your propery. You will want to hear the scenarios given to you by these different contractors with the hypothetical problem that your tank is leaking. There are three scenarios that could play out.

1. Once the tank is out of the ground, Simple Tank can have it inspected by a township official. This official is going to inspect the tank for holes and stained soil. Let’s just say that when the tank is removed, you can see oil in the ground. If you have that happening, you have to do remediation. Simple Tank would recommend a remediation.

2. Simple Tank could pull the tank. The official comes and holes are found to be present. There are visual signs of contaminated soil, such as stains. Simple Tank will tank a sample from the worst noticeable area where the leak has occurred. Simple Tank then sends that sample to a lab for testing. This process takes five days to get the results. The results will determine what the next steps are that are taken.The DEP has a threshold of 5,100 parts per million. If it is higher than 5,100, you will have to do remediation. You may have options to drill and extract samples to prove to the DEP that all samples are below the 5,100 mark. Simple Tank can also go out and remove a little bit of soil and make sure you are getting clean samples.

3. Simple tank could pull the tank and there could be noticeable holes, but no contamination. That would bring us to our third scenario. If your contractor calls the DEP and gets a case number without proving to you that there is contamination, that is not the proper thing to do. This will cost you extra unneeded money. Simple Tank will take three center line samples from the excavation and sending them to the lab. If those samples come back as nondetect, the results go to the town official.

Now, you know the steps that are to be taken if holes are found in your oil take upon removal. Clients have to be careful when choosing a contractor, and sure really make sure that their oil tank is insured. Clients should be asking themselves and their contractors, “what will happen if my oil tank is found to be leaking and what options do I have”. You do not want to stick with a contractor who is going to make you go through unnecessary remediation. You are now equipped with the knowledge you need to hire a skilled experienced contractor who will provide you with a quality inspection.

You may have known or just found out that a house you were intending to sell with an underground oil tank has sprung a leak. Do not panic. Although this can be a very stressful time, especially if you are relying on the sale of this house, there are steps you can take to get your oil tank removed. Even if you need the money right away and feel like you have no other option than to sell it outright, there are some precautions you should take.

Do not sell it for all cash to an investor if it has a leaking oil tank. But, let’s just say this is what you decide to do. A business comes in and buys it in cash from you. Unfortunately, the offer you will receive may not be what you were expecting. These investors will heavily take into consideration the fact that you have a leaking oil tank. Houses with leaking oil tanks are a huge risk to investors, so the offers will be much lower than what you are probably expecting.

What Are My Options?

Simple Tank takes into consideration all aspects of personal life to help consumers afford repair work in order to help them get their home into sellable condition if your oil tank has leaked. Simple Tank does offer several financing solutions to customers. This is a great option for a consumer that may not have the money to afford repairs upfront. Simple Tank offers financing options that could allow customers to not have to make a payment for twelve months, potentially giving them a long enough window to sell their home. You are able to take what you have made from the home to pay off the loan.

Simple Tank also offers a service that allows us to discuss with both the buyer’s attorney and the homeowner’s attorney. The home must be in good standing for this process to go through and there must be a buyer in the picture. If the tank is really the only misstep with the house, then Simple Tank will sometimes get paid at closing. Once the home sells, a check will be sent directly to Simple Tank to cover the costs. There is no money needed out of pocket for this service.

Why Simple Tank Is The Only Option

Selling your home for cash to investors is not an option you should consider if you are experiencing money shortages. A leaking oil tank is a problem with the home that investors will heavily consider and will use it as leverage to make you a low offer for the home, which is why having a warranty or insurance is important. This can be frustrating and you will not be getting what the home is worth. You will get the least amount of money with this option. Instead, you will want to be able to get the oil tank fixed up. Simple Tank provides you with two options: financing and paying the contractor at closing. Both of these options require no money up front and will get you your maximum value for the home.

What Is The Law Surrounding Oil Tank Removal Before I Sell My Home?

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There is no law stating that an oil tank needs to be removed before a home is listed on the market. However, this is a defining factor in the homebuying process and will turn away many potential property and home buyers. We will discuss why it is imperative to have the oil tank removed and some roadblocks that may stand in the way if you choose not to.

Roadblocks If You Decide Not To Remove Your Oil Tank

If you decide not to remove your oil tank, then there will be several roadblocks you will face that will make it difficult to sell your home.

The Realtor. Realtors have been known to filter out any homes that have an underground oil tank. Realtors want homes that can sell and can sell fast. If a realtor is filtering out homes with a specific feature, it is important to take note. Realtors do not want to get involved or stuck with a client’s home that does not have sellable qualities. This really shrinks your potential buyer pool.

The Buyer. You could potentially get past the first roadblock. The realtor could start to then begin showing your home to potential buyers. An underground oil tank will be a hard pill for potential buyers to swallow.

The Buyer’s Attorney. If a buyer is still interested in your property, even with the underground oil tank, you will next have to get through the buyer’s own personal attorney. The attorney will be more informed with legalities and tests, providing warnings to the buyer and asking them more details about the property.

Mortgage Lender. The mortgage company, before they provide you with a mortgage, will want to know key details about the state of the property. You will have to inform them that the home has an underground oil tank. This may turn the mortgage company away from providing you with the necessary funds.

Homeowner’s Insurance. In order to be provided with insurance, just like with a mortgage, you will have to provide information on your property. You may face higher fees or premiums if an insurance company decides to cover your property, given that there is an underground oil tank.

It is hard to sell a property and go through the inspection process alone, jumping through these hoops just to sell a home with an underground oil tank could make the process less than desirable. So, what would be the solution to all of these roadblocks? The good news is that they can easily be avoided.

Take The Tank Out. Make your life easier by simply taking the tank out before you sell the property. This will make your property more appealing on the market and will guarantee your home will be considered for the market to begin with by a realtor. This will make buyers more interested in your property if it does not have a potential problem attached to it. Buyers do not want to have to worry about their new property.

When you have an existing oil tank and want to know if there is any leakage, a contractor can come in and do a test on your property. This test will be a yes or no test. What does this mean? This test’s sole purpose is to discover if there is a discharge or not from the oil tank. If the contractor takes a single soil boring or takes three, they are still going to find out if there is contamination or not. If contamination is found in the first soil boring, then the job is over. If the first soil sample is clean, then the tests will continue.

 

I Want To Know If My Oil Tank Is Leaking

If you suspect that there is an oil leak from your oil tank, it is best to get in touch with an experienced professional contractor. You will want to make sure that you do your research and find a contractor with credentials and experience. If you do not, you run the risk of a contractor potentially cutting one of your copper lines and creating more problems than there were before. An experienced contractor will know how many samples to take and will be able to provide you with a yes or do answer concerning your soil. A contractor should stop testing once a contaminant is discovered. One of the only ways to know if your oil tank is leaking and how severe is to take samples of the surrounding soil. So, it is important to do this step properly. This is especially true if you are planning on selling your home.

 

Why There Will Never Be Four Soil Samples?

A contractor will never need to do four soil samples and here is why. Imagine that the oil tank is a soda can, laying on the ground. It is a cylindrical shape. There are four sides. The two ends and the two sides. So, why don’t you take a fourth sample? A contractor will never take a sample between the tank and the house. The oil tank is typically set up a few feet away from the house. There are two copper lines that run from the house to the oil tank. The oil is getting from the tank to the house through one copper line. The other copper line returns the excess oil. These lines are about a quarter inch large. It would be easy for a contractor to accidentally cut the lines, which would cause a leak. This is why you never sample between the house and the tank.

 

What If The Soil Is Dirty?

Typically, a contractor will do three soil bores. However, if the soil has presented contaminants after the first or second bores, then the contractor will cease because contamination has been found and that is what they have been hired to do. All three samples will not be analyzed. The samples are being used to formulate a yes or no answer for the client. Those samples will then be combined into one. That one sample will then be sent to the lab.

A lot of people often wonder where their invoices are coming from. Or maybe, they really do not consider where their invoices come from. As the customer, you hire someone to remediate your soil and then they use their inhouse employee or hire a contractor that does the sampling. This contractor determines how much soil is actually coming out of the ground. The contractor’s motivation is going to be to pull as much soil from the ground as he can to run up the invoice. Everything is up to the contractor on how much soil removal goes on during a project. All your trust is placed with the oil tank removal contractor. However, there are a few ways you can combat this to make trusting your contractor a little easier.

 

Get A Fixed Price Before The Job Is Started

Simple Tank provides you with a fixed price before any job is started. Our professionals come out and can tell you exactly what you are going to pay going into a new project. There are no open-ended contracts with Simple Tank. Prices will not change during a project.

• It is very hard to protect yourself if your contractor gives you an open-ended contract.

If you still decide to go down the route of using an open-ended contractor, you should consider hiring a third party to oversee your contractor and his consultant. Why? This third party will guarantee that your contractor has to be honest.

The average homeowner may not be well versed in soil terminology and processes needed to complete a project. This makes it easy for contractors and consultants to take advantage of customers by upcharging them wherever they see fit. Hiring another subsurface evaluator will help to oversee the contractor. The benefit of this is because they will be well versed in terminology, rules, regulations, and processes. This will change the project for the contractor because he will know he will need to do a proper job or else the hired subcontractor will alert you.

Ask them if they know the company that you have hired. You will not want the additional subcontractor to have any ties to the company. Have whoever you hire come out on the same day to oversee the project.

 

Which Option Should You Choose?

A fixed price contractor allows you to know that even if something comes up during the project, you will not have to pay anything other than the fixed price that is listed in your agreement. This streamlines the process and you will not have to worry about whether or not your contractor is being honest. Simple Tank provides this to their customers as they value honesty and integrity during every project.

You can also choose to have an open ended contract with a contractor. This can prove to be challenging. If you decide to go this route, you will want to also hire a subcontractor with no affiliation to the prior company in order to oversee the project. This will help to keep your contractor honest, but will come with an additional cost to you.

I was arrested a few months ago for driving under the influence!! I needed a really good defense attorney to get all the charges dropped because I wasn’t even drinking!! So I did what everyone does and Googled DUI attorneys in NJ. I hired someone I thought I could trust to get these bogus charges dropped.

Once the attorney received my deposit he advised me that we had to go to court and fight the charges. He couldn’t give me a price because he didn’t know how long the case would go on for. This really didn’t make much sense to me because I wasn’t drinking and I knew for sure there had to be something the attorney could of done easily to get the charges dropped!!

Long story short, the case went on for months and cost me tens of thousands of dollars to defend!! After it was all over I ran into a old friend of mine who was now an attorney that agreed to look at my case because something sounded “off”.

After carefully reviewing everything, he showed my the LAW and how I got arrested with no evidence of drinking was all bogus. He said one court date with him showing the judge this one law would of been all I needed to have the case dropped. He would of charged $1500. I paid $28,000 and months of my life defending this BS!

This sounds really crazy doesn’t it? Well, the truth is, that story is not true at all. But I am sure it sounded pretty accurate no? My point is, this is happening EVERYDAY in the residential oil tank service industry.

Homeowners are googling for tank contractors in their area, they are hiring the cheapest guy thy can find to pull their tanks. When the “police” (town inspector) comes to inspect their tank and they fail the inspection (get arrested), they turn to their cheap contractor (attorney) for advice.

The contractor doesn’t explain the laws and pushes the client into a long drawn out soil remediation project (court case). It winds up costing tens of thousands of dollars in the end.

Meanwhile, if they had the right contractor (attorney) that actually explained all the laws, the majority of the time, it’s not even required to remediate the soils.

Don’t let this happen to you! Do your own due diligence and make sure your know the laws! I created this Simple step by step guideline that will save you THOUSANDS of dollars when removing your underground oil tank.

Make sure to save this link so next time your pulling out an oil tank, you can run though all the possible outcomes and keep your contractor in check!! If they start giving you advice that doesn’t line up with what this guideline says, then you need to stop the job immediately and get a second opinion!!

https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSdv3RmDgDrYEkZKDI92CaOfTNfHQP48tbr3v2I-yDYZWshWcA/viewform

Clients ask us at Simple Tank about their filled oil tanks. Most, think that they are meeting standard requirements regarding their oil tank. However, this is false. When that tank was filled in place, most likely, it was not required to test the soil around the tank before it was filled. A contractor came out ten years ago, they cut the top of the tank open, sucked the oil out, and filled it with sand. The client is given the documentation. However, there is no way to tell if that tank is or was leaking.

Continue reading “What Do I Do With My Oil Tank Filled With Sand?”

You may have heard from someone in your neighborhood that they are or have just gotten their oil tank removed. Your first instinct may be to walk over there or call them to hear about the project if you are planning on getting your oil tank removed as well. You may ask your neighbor, “do you like your contractor?”. Your neighbor may give you a referral to the contractor because he feels his contractor went above and beyond. But, you may have also noticed that your neighbor’s oil tank had not been leaking.

No Leaks. No Complaints.

What is common in the industry is that when a client has their tank pulled and there are not any leaks, the client will automatically be happy with the job. However, when the tank leaks, there may be a different story. The neighbor has not had to deal with the contractor when a problem has arisen. All the contractor had to do in this case was to handle the removal project smoothly, which he did and this made the client happy. However, that does not mean that that same contractor will handle the remediation phase, if it is needed, the same way.

It’s Not Only About Pulling An Oil Tank

You will want a contractor well versed in all areas of tank removal and soil remediation, just in case something is or goes wrong with your oil tank. Having an expert in oil tank removal is great, but you will want to be covered in case something else is wrong. The requirements for oil tank removal have grown since the past, but are still low considering industry standards. You will want to judge your contractor on how well they will handle the remediation phase of the project. This is because your oil tank removal process may end up being much more than an oil tank removal. If you do not have the right contractor guiding you, you can be out more money than necessary. There are a lot of factors that could come into play.

How Do You Pick The Right Contractor?

You will want to heavily research your potential contractors and not just base your decision on a referral. Go online and read Google reviews about the quality of the contractor’s work. You will want to specifically look for not only oil tank removal, but also soil remediation. You can also find information on LinkedIn and Facebook. At Simple Tank, we work to provide every customer with an excellent experience, information, and a quality oil tank inspection.

When you are removing an oil tank, you have to assume the worst. If the worst happens and you are not prepared, you will be out more money. Keep this in mind when you are looking at which contractors to hire. Preparing for the worst, will make sure you will have all your bases covered. You will want to have a contractor that will be able to advise you, provide you with necessary information, and has the experience to get the job done efficiently.