Exxon Valdez

This really has nothing to do with being a doctor. Or a mom. But I thought I'd share anyway.  Our house was built in 1931 and is equipped with all sort of fun and quirky original features like the built in mail slot, the original tiled fireplace, and oil heat.

I had no idea what oil heat was when we moved it (though it really is quite self explanatory).  Homes used to be heated with oil.  Most are now gas heated.  But the lucky few homes that haven't been converted from oil to gas heat usually have a large (ours is 300 gallons) tank for oil, often stored in the ground.  Our tank, which we lovingly named Frank, lives in our basement.  Frank is huge and red, and when he gets near empty, the gas company comes with their oil truck, sticks a nozzle into a hole in our house that leads into Frank, and fills 'im up.

We learned the hard way that the oil company is very prompt (and very expensive) when we moved in last February to a 45 degree home and an empty Frank (way to time it, previous owners).

We've hemmed and hawed about converting to gas but thought maybe we'd take that on after this winter.  After the construction of a bathroom on our top floor that gave me 3 months of daily rage, anxiety, and hypertensive attacks, we weren't really gunning to get another major house project under our belts.

The weekend prior to Thanksgiving Ben returned from a business trip, and I went to stow his suitcase down in the basement, near Frank.  It was late on a Friday night, and I was tired after a week of working, but wasn't too out of it to think, "self, that tiny puddle of oil under Frank can mean nothing good."  I informed Ben of said puddle, and the next morning we called the oil company to inquire.  Our options were:
1. Do nothing until Monday when they could send someone out to check it out, since it didn't seem to be accumulating quickly and no actually leaks were noticeable from Frank (interestingly the oil people said it is extremely rare to have a tank corrode that is not in ground - what are the odds? Should have played the power ball this week)
or
2. Have someone come out that day which would (of course) be double the rate.

Well, having a leaking 300 gallon oil tank in our basement which had, coincidentally (or not??) been filled that week didn't sit too well with me, so we opted for number 2.

About an hour later a very nice man came to check it out, poked around Frank a little, wiped the area of the tank directly above the oil puddle on the ground, and then said "oh no. this is not good. "  From simply wiping (the physics of this still boggles my mind), oil started spurting out the bottom of Frank.  For real. It was full on Exxon Valdez in our basement.

An emergency call to another oil company guy to bring in "the drums", 2 hours, and a lot of pumping oil out of Frank and into 5 55 gallon drums later we were all set.  Sort of.  We now have a temporary line from the drums to our furnace (when one drum is empty we have to take the tubes out of one drum and put 'em in the next drum).  The house is heated.  But having the oil sitting in these plastic drums is, clearly, less than ideal.  Makes me glad I don't smoke.  But seriously.  It isn't funny. And you know what else it wasn't?  Cheap.  To have that work done, and at the weekend rate to boot.

But the good news is that converting to gas just skyrocketed up our house to-do list.  The gas company couldn't be happier.