Replace Tanks

[jay]

Curious to understand how the professionals think about this: 24 year old single wall fiberglass tanks with CSLD. Should money be spent on PLLD system? Should it be considered to have these tanks for another 10 years, that is, life of these tanks?

Thanks

[CherokeeUST]

Jay,
Interesting question. I look forward to other answers.

My answer. I'm not worrying about the tank until it fails a test. The tank is most likely not going to be a source of a huge release. (Unless it cracks in half, all at once.) Of course, fuel will leak into the ground in the event of any release. But if the tank is the source of the release and with CSLD as the tank release detection, it should not spread so far before it is detected that cleanup is going to be exorbitant. The site has to have financial responsibility in place to cover releases.

At 30 years of age, I might let Tanknology (or another company) put a camera in the tank and tell me how it looks. This is also the time you might start having trouble getting an insurance company to cover the tanks. But, if the cameras do not show any obvious issues the tank could be good for another 30 years.

If you look at the ASTWMO http://astswmo.org/category/tanks/ analysis of leaks, tanks are usually not the source.

I do think states are eventually going to take that choice away from you and require ALL single-walled tanks to be removed from service. California and a couple of other states have already done this.

[FlankerSu27]

Great to know that tanks are that long-lasting, I figured they would be shorter-lived. Do these values change with different fuels?

[CherokeeUST]

Tanks are warrantied for 30 years for most petroleum fuels and E100 to B100.

You can look up specific equipment compatibility here.
https://www.ul.com/apps/ul-fuel-compatibility-tool