Heating Oil in a tank on my property. Power Company says its theirs. What can I do with it?

Factual Questions
1

I recently bought a house in Florida for my mother. It has all electrical appliances except for the water heater, which is gas. Part of turning on the utilites involved having the gas line unlocked.
What she learned was a bit surprising to me. The previous owners sold all of the gas in the tank to the power company. If she wants the thing unlocked, she has to purchase ALL of the fuel. The tank is full of fuel, though. It is enough to heat the water in that house for probably 10 years. There is nothing else in that house using gas. They will not let her pay only for her usage, and they do not make payment plans or anything like that. They will only sell her the entire tank or nothing.
I supposed as the new owner of the property, I am expected to purchase all of that gas and then I would just charge my renter for their usage. But I am not about to spend $600 on a tank of gas that I don’t even want to begin with!
My biggest complaint about the house was the lack of an electric water heater. Now, after the power company acting this way, I have the perfect excuse to get rid of it like I want. I can’t stand the huge ABOVE GROUND gas tank in the back yard. It’s old fashioned, disgusting, and stupid. I want to get rid of it. I will replace it with an electrical water heater and look into getting solar panels.

But the gas still belongs to the power company, so here is what I plan to do. I want to call them and tell them to come get their gas immediately before I remove the tank. What is a reasonable amount of time? Is the request even reasonable?
After they come get their gas, I will have the thing disconnected and advertise it as a free steel gas tank–You Haul. I think that either someone who needs a tank, or someone who wants to scrap the metal would love to have it.

Is there any problem with demanding that the power company come get their gas off my damn lawn??

2

Depends on the company’s standing with the state. If it’s a state-, county- or municipally endorsed utility like FP&L or somesuch they are likely to have a contract with the state requiring them to provide access to all residents of area X - which means keeping their hardware there.

Does the tank itself actually belong to you, or is it owned by the gas company?

3

That’s an interesting question. I will have to find out. If I don’t own it, they can just come get all of their shit in the same day before I destroy it!

4

Wait, so where does the heating oil come in?

5

Probably through a buried line.

6

Heating oil is generally delivered by truck, not through buried lines.

7

Bear, check your legal documents from the sale and make sure you aren’t dealing with a utility easment. It’s possible that the gas company has an easment for the spot the tank is sitting in, if it’s a huge tank.

8

He means into the house. Obviously it’s delivered; why else would there be a tank?

9

I’m confused; is it heating oil or gas? OP uses both terms. I suspect heating oil. If it’s already been delivered; it’s been paid for if there is no meter on the feed line.

I don’t know of any other method that’s used to bill for heating oil? They deliver to the tank in increments like 500/1000/1250 gallons. They bill you for that amount and it’s yours.

10

You should probably read the whole OP. The previous owners sold the contents of the tank back to the company.

11

Actually, “heating oil” appears only in the title, and he repeatedly said “gas” throughout the posting. I’m confused, too. I was going to point out that it was for a hot water heater, so it was probably gas, but apparently there are oil-fired hot water heaters. I didn’t know that. LP gas is sometimes delivered to a refillable tank, too, so it could actually be gas. I think we need clarification.

12

I don’t know what’s in there. “Heating Oil” seems like a familiar term, but then I assume it’s actually just some type of fuel or kerosene or propane or something so I just used the term “gas”.
Truthfully, I’ve never had anything but all electric appliances before. I am not really sure what type of fuel it is. But I’m sure it’s nothing uncommon.

13

Not that I know much about such things, but does the tank look like this (heating oil tank), or this (LP tank)?

Might help clarify - as I was unsure when reading the OP as to whether it was heating oil or LP.

My GUESS is that its the latter - if it is outside. I’ve only ever seen the former (heating oil tanks) inside the basement of the house. However, my experience is in the northeast US where the ground freezes in the winter time, and as I said - I know little of such things.

14

I think it’s the second picture, but smaller. God, I hope it’s not that big. I’ve never even seen the house, so I’m not sure. My mother picked it out, and I just purchased it for her. I haven’t been to the US since Christmas, so I havent seen it yet.

BUT, I just called over there to check the status of it all. Last we spoke on Saturday, I told her to tell them to come get there gas and I will just buy her an electric water heater. But I wasn’t sure if that would fly, so I made this thread.
When she went to the tank to get the phone number again, she smelled a little gas. That’s pretty much all she had to mention for them to rush right out the same day and remove everything. Apparantly the tank does belong to them. Good, they can have that unsightly bahemoth.

So… anyone know much about solar panel water heaters?

15

Yes.

There are two main types - one that uses your water heater in the house to store the hot water (just the collector is on the roof), and the other that stores the hot water in the collector itself. In a mild-winter climate like Florida, she can probably get by with the first type of system. They tend to be cheaper. However, you are still going to need a supplemental water heater - several days of cloudy weather in the winter will leave you with only luke-warm water.

These guys have both systems: http://www.thermomax.com/
Also, here is another roof-storage system: HeliosRay.com is for sale | HugeDomains

I have an ancient collector / tank system that provides maybe 60% of my DHW needs. If I were to upgrade it to a more modern collector with a larger surface area, it could provide 100% of my hot water in the summer.
On my last house, I had a system that used a direct-heated tank on the roof. It worked so well, that if I was away for a day (no water usage), it would trip the over-temperature / pressure valve in the afternoon.

16

When I bought my bank repo’d house, it had a propane tank in front, about 80% full of gas. When I called the gas compnay they told me that usually the previous owners sell back the gas to the company, requiring the new owner to enter into whatever contract with the gas company. However, the previous owners had NOT sold the gas back, and since I bought the house AS-IS, I was now the owner of about $200 worth of propane.

17

Just to chime in, “heating oil” is not a generic term. It’s a specific term for the liquid petroleum product also referred to as No. 2 fuel oil. Chemically, it is very similar to diesel fuel. As stated above, since it is a liquid at normal pressures, it is stored in unpressurized tanks. Note that you would never refer to this as “gas.” It is not gaseous, nor is it at all similar to gasoline (the latter of which is often informally, and confusingly, referred to as “gas” in the U.S.).

For residential use, heating oil tanks are often located in basements. These are very common in the Northeast U.S. Buried heating oil tanks used be common, but are much more heavily regulated today, because of the possibility of undetected leaks. Modern buried heating oil tanks have to be double-walled and have a leak-detection system.

Propane is the predominant component of liquefied petroleum gas (LPG). (Note that “gas” means that the substance is gaseous under normal pressure.) These are stored in pressurized tanks or cylinders. Because they are under pressure, they cannot be stored within a residential structure. The tanks are outside, either above-ground or buried.

So anyway, it sounds like you had a propane/LPG tank, not a heating oil tank. Generally, when property is sold, the contents of a tank are either sold to the new owner (if the tank is owned by the property owner), or sold back to the utility (if the tank is leased).

When I sold a house with heating oil tank, at the closing, the contents of the tank were inventoried and the new owner had to pay me for the fuel at the market rate. When I subsequently bought a house with a buried LPG tank, because the ownership of the tank also transferred to me, I had to buy the contents of that tank.

You’re in Florida, which is probably why you think a propane is “old fashioned, disgusting, and stupid.” Here in the Northeast, electric heat and hot water is incredibly expensive. As I mentioned above, heating oil is most common here, which I personally think is disgusting. (It’s like having a diesel truck idling in your basement.) Since natural gas was not available in my area, we opted for propane for our heat and hot water. Not wanting an eyesore, however, we have a buried 500-gallon tank.