Best Of

I went through pinhole leak tank failure in our house, and witnessed a few similar failures for friends and relatives. A few useful things I learned:
- If you have a decades old tank, it is not a matter of if, but when.

1) Tank leak patches:
Leaks are most often pinhole leaks. These can be (short term) mitigated by applying a magnetic patch (e.g. Rectorseal Magne-patch ) to the hole. So it maybe a good idea to have one or a few of these patches on hand, esp if your tank is old, so there is no delay slapping one or a few on, if a leak happens. Will not help with a massive leak, but will with a typical dripping pinhole. I see no downside to having them available. If you don't have them available, you have to wait until a tech can come out, who will slap one on, or until you can have such patch(es) shipped to you. BTW A poor man's magnetic patch is a strong neodymium magnetic disk, combined with a layer of bycicle tire rubber patch layer between it and the hole. My mother-in-law's tank sprung 5 pinpoint holes, and we used the improvised style patch on 3 of these, worked as good as the magne-patch. This tied us over until we could line up a tank replacement. I attached a pic of the purpose made magne-patch (expensive) and a neodymium magnet (cheap).

2) Sludge and leftover oil:
We are in southern MA, and here, it is pretty common for a tank installer, often an oil vendor or burner service company, to pump out the leftover oil into a tanker truck of temporary storage tank, and then pump it back into the new tank. The pump line has a filter but it may not be able to get rid of all the existing biologicals (mold, fungus and bacteria) in the old oil. It is easy to say "get rid of the old oil" or "time the replacement when your tank is empty" , but not everybody has the luxury of time and money to do this. When my tank went, it still had 250 gallons of oil, and I was not about just to chuck ~1K in oil. When they pumped the oil out, they used an overhead hose, and managed to leave the sediment at the bottom of the old tank. The usual installer (all of them we have dealt with) was able to dispose of the sediment for a small fee, along with the old tank. So we just added a biocide and a water dispenser additive when we filled the new tank(s).

3) Additives:
Oil additives you can readily buy are either water dispersants, or biocides. It is hard to find one that does both. I am skeptical about any additive that claims to get rid of sludge, (a "maybe"). Getting rid of ( dispersing) the accumulated water works well, and prevents the biologicals from breeding in the tank, which would lead to sludge formation. So IMO that is a good preventative measure.