With the fast approach of fall, so is the last ditch effort to sell your home by being included in the fall housing market. However what homeowners and some realtors fail to acknowledge is that home heating oil tanks that are still buried underground could stall your plans to sell when you finally find a buyer. Out of site out of mind is what they say, but its what you can’t see that could hurt you the most. If your home heating oil storage tank is buried underground, you probably know already that if there is a leak it could be very unfortunate - not only for the environment, but for your pocketbook. When an underground storage tank or connected piping leaks, the cleanup can be costly. And if your home owners insurance policy contains a "pollution exclusion" clause, (which many do), you could get stuck with the bill. The best way to avoid significant expenses later is to have your tank taken out of the ground now and have a new tank installed in your basement, garage or storage shed. Why do underground heating oil tanks corrode? Corrosion is caused by the inherent tendency of iron based metals that most all heating oil underground storage tanks are comprised of, to revert to a stable form. This stable form is what you know as rust. When and how fast steel turns to rust is dependent on a wide variety of variables such as soil moisture, pH acidity, backfill material, physical location of the tank, the thickness of the tank, amount of water in the tank, age of the tank and any scratching or damage occurring during the tank's installation. Rust never sleeps and eventually all steel tanks will corrode and leak, maybe next week, maybe 20 years from now. So the best solution to the above is simply to have your residential underground heating oil tank removed by a multi faceted service organization like Tri State Environmental Services that specializes in providing its diverse customers with a wide range of environmental services and products to identify, correct, monitor and prevent problems.