It Was My Fault....

[BigFish]

I install and replace home heating oil tanks for a living....so about four months ago I did a job for this elderly woman, very nice lady. The tank was in a crawl space under her house and it needed to be replaced! Due to the fact that the tank was laid in place after the foundation was poured and before they framed the house, the only way I could get the old tank out was in several small pieces and because, naturally, I could not get another tank into the crawl space, the only alternative was for me to install a tank outside the house, on a cement pad! Here is where the fun begins When I installed the tank, I let her know that because the tank was not going to be in a heated space, that she may want to have an insulated shed built around it to give it some protection and maybe keep it a little insulated should we get some extreme cold weather. Well....yesterday (remember it was -10 degress....the coldest night and week in over 50 years) her daughter calls me fit to be tied! Quote "you installed this tank for my mother and she is 75 years old and her heat went out last night and we had to call a plumber to come down here and get the heat going again and he said that you should have insulated the oil line blah, blah, blah..." you get the picture! My response was that her mother had not insulated the shed she had built, first of all, second of all, the oil line was not the problem and did not need to be insulated because the furnace is in the crawl space and provides ample heat to keep the line plenty warm....I said to her "the problem is that it is - 10 degrees outside, the coldest day and night in over 50 years, and the coldest week in 100 years.....hundreds if not thousands of people all over New England are dealing with the same problems due to the cold and that there was nothing wrong with the job I had done installing the tank, the simple fact was that it was - 10 degrees and at that temperature anyone with an outside oil tank is having problems because home heating oil at that temperature turns to jello and clots up"!!!!! Well, that explanation was not good enough, she just kept railing on about how I had taken advantage of her 75 year old mother and that I should have put the new tank under the house (even after I had explained to her that it was physically impossible) so she goes on to tell me that she has a kerosene heater on the oil tank to warm it up...........are you following me here.......I then say to her, why are you heating the oil tank if the problem is the oil line??????? Really long story short...I told her that the tank was installed correctly, according to state fire codes and that it was inspected and approved by her towns fire prevention office and that if she called them, they will tell her that there is nothing wrong with the installation and that they will also tell her that many other people were experiencing the same thing....she has not called again so she must have talked to the fire dept. Talk about a pain in the a$$! I also told her that she should call the weather man and complain to him about the cold because he has about as much to do with and about as much control over the fact that her mothers oil tank froze up as I do.......can you say beyotch!!! People just need someone to blame for their problems I guess!

[fishweewee]

She should have gotten propane instead.

[BigFish]

Gas don't freeze but it go "BOOM"!

[fishweewee]

Yeah, it go boom but at least there's no tank sludge on the bottom.

[BigFish]

Sludge/House......Gas/Boom...????????

[beachwalker]

FWW,

that's what hank Hill would have said........

Bummer BF. Sounds like you did the best you could

[UserRemoved1]

You are an evil person Bigfish. How could you take a 75 year old lady's heat away?
I can't believe this. I'm going to report you to the NABTCA on Tuesday.
Shame on you

[Bawana]

Kreosene heater blowing on oil tank --that sounds safe. Musta been a dream cutting that old tank up in the crawl space. Why plumber called ??wouldnt that be a oil burner tech???

[BigFish]

Right on all of the above Bawana!

[chris L]

man BF if I knew thats what you did for a living I would have called you to cut my oil tank out of my crawl space and the one in the ground too .

[Backbeach Jake]

I hate crawl spaces, all dirt and spiders and absolutely no room to work. Ya wind up all cut and beat up 'cos there's simply no other way. I knew a plumber who had to fix a broken toilet drain pipe in a crawl space 2 months after it broke. Only charged 400 bucks. Customer bitched and moaned. He pointed to his paper and chit covered overalls and asked " How much would it take to get YOU to wear this?" He got paid and thanked.

[seabuggy]

Plumbers never get any respect. It is a good thing they get paid good or there woul be none. Then we would be in a hell of a fix. The greatest inventor of all time was John Crapper. He invented the toilet. I grew up with an outhouse, complete with big green flies in summer and nite pots in winter. Imagine having to go outside to "lay cable" with last weeks temps. How do we thank John Crapper? No paid holiday like Abe Lincoln, MLK, etc. All we say "I gotta have a crap" and "The john is to the left". I may go to New Hampshire an see if the Democrats can solve this injustice with all the rest of our problems. They know a lot about the raw material.

[BigFish]

Let me say a few more words about crawl spaces......rats and mice...dead and alive.....spiders... bumping your head repeatedly on pipes and floor joists.....rats....big ones.....and the feeling that there are little rat and mice eyes trained on you while you are in the crawl space! Don't like crawl spaces!