Shhh, It's a secret!

It's all over...

We moved at the end of August and got everything out of the house in time for our closing.

Although the closing was delayed twice. The main reason for the delays was the buried oil tank that we had to get rid of.

Nowadays, a buried oil tank is just trouble no matter how you look at it. In our area, all of them will have to be removed or replaced in the near future so as a condition of the sale we had to have that done.

Buried oil tanks are a potential environmental nightmare. All of them eventually corrode and leak so our state is very strict on how they are dealt with. The must be handled as hazardous waste, the soil around them must be tested and if contaminated are also handled as hazardous waste.

Basically, the sidewalk in front of my house (I live in an urban town outside of NYC) was dug up from the front of my house to the street and almost from one side of the property to the other. The hole, when all the digging was done, was 9 feet deep (down to bedrock!) and about 10 feet wide and 12 feet long. About 49,000 pounds of dirt was excavated and the resulting hole was filled by the same about of gravel.

The excavation, removal of the tank and dirt, fill and new concrete cost me $20k and took about two days.

The first delay in the closing was due to having this work done, the second delay was in waiting for the soil tests to return so that the remaining dirt surrounding the hole could be certified as non-contaminated.

All that took a week in time but once it was done we closed and got a nice fat check from the profit. I actually went out this weekend and spent a small piece of it buying a couple of toys for us (a Nintendo DS for the boy, new video camera for me and a Blackberry Pearl cell phone for the wife). We worked hard over the last three months to get to this point and we deserved it.

So, it's all done now and the bills are paid off and I feel good.

Labels: bills, boxes, brother, buyer, closing, debt, house, money, oil tank, selling the house

posted by section306g @ 8:43 PM