Black Friday, Black Drips

The morning after Thanksgiving while I went down into the basement to do some laundry, I smelt a chemical smell.  I couldn't quite determine what it was, and it wasn't very strong.  It still was smelly when I rotated the laundry, but we were busy making lunch or something and I can smell better than Colin, so I just put it off.  In the afternoon Colin took Alistair and Charlotte to see Trolls and I stayed home with Evelyn.  When they got back, Colin could smell the odor when he opened the back door.  Going down in the basement, the smell was stronger and smelled like gas.  When Colin investigated, he discovered that one of our two oil tanks were leaking.  Thankfully, not badly - just a couple of small wet patches on the floor.  We called the oil company (at 4:30 pm) and they sent someone out straight away.

We have two oil tanks.  We're not sure why there are two, but we've only been using one.  They are both old and pretty rusty.  (The leaky one is the one on the left.  Kitty litter and a special oil absorbent pad are underneath.)  Because the tank could have failed over the weekend, they wanted to make sure we were safe over the weekend.  So, they set us up with two five gallon containers of oil and connect those to our furnace.

Their plan was to drain our oil tank, and put it in a tank outside over the weekend, until they could replace the tank, but they accidentally brought the new tank instead of the temporary tank.  The new tank is in the opposite front corner of the house.  The old tank location does not meet code for distance from the electrical panel and main power shut off.  (Funny how the electrical inspector didn't point that out when Colin put in the new panel.)  Our Black Friday deal was that we got this slightly fancier thank (the tank is inside the exterior galvanized outer tank, so if it ever does leak, it won't leak into the house) for about the same price as a regular tank.  (This tank didn't fit in the house of the person that ordered it.)  They will come back next week to connect the new tank to the furnace. They also will have to install new pipes to fill the tank.  The good thing is that the oil delivery guy won't have to trudge through deep snow and around our pickett fence to get to the tank.  Now it will be close to our driveway.