Securing a home’s oil tank is a priority task that any responsible homeowner should see through. From pipe planning, selection of type, material, and capacity to procurement, layout, and installation, the homeowner should be involved and willing to commit to decisions that would affect the oil tank’s expected life. The main reason is simple enough: safety. Domestic oil have a high enough flash point that simply following regulations would be enough to avoid fires, but that doesn’t mean people can take for granted how volatile domestic oil can be. As one would expect, it is important to stress the safety factor in all the steps involved in the installation of domestic oil tanks. New to all of this? Here are some pointers for you to follow.
First, you need to know the differences between a steel and a plastic storage tank. There are other materials that you can look into, including wood, but considering commercial availability, these are your top choices. Steel oil storage tanks are physically smaller than plastic ones for the same storage capacity. This is owed to the wall thickness of these tanks, with steel being as strong as thick plastic minus a few millimeters in wall thickness. However, steel corrodes, and there are reported condensation problems with the stored oil when outside conditions are not optimal. Plastic is cheaper, but it is easier to drill through for looters who’d rather siphon a few liters off your stock than buy their own. The best way to decide which of these you’ll use is by checking the moisture content of your storage facility or shed, and by considering the security of the surroundings.
As for location, it is ill-advised to have your oil tank buried, especially because of unpredictable land movement that might damage the tank without you knowing it. Not only is this a safety issue, it is also a major environmental concern. So even though you’ll save some space, buried oil tanks are not the way to go. This is also considering the fact that it would be easier to forget something that isn’t constantly visible, which would mean that any leak would be that much harder to pinpoint. Sure, that might not bring you problems now, but it certainly would pose as an invisible threat to future homeowners.
Not surprisingly, choosing the correct oil tank does not mean the same thing for commercial and residential cases. Installing a commercial-use oil tank would be overkill when only a single home or a few in a commune would be the ones to use it and using residential type oil storage tanks for commercial purposes would be disastrous. Again, the safety and environmental issues cannot be stressed enough, as they are the main reasons for all the regulations and maintenance involved in the whole affair of buying and installing oil tanks. With that said, you can’t go wrong when picking from wholesale shops, as those have passed strict testing and are therefore certified adequate for use. You only need to be informed about how to maintain one, as with all the other equipment in your home.