My 1000 gallon LP gas tank is floating up!!!
 

Bummer...

My 1000 gallon LP gas tank, that we had buried last week, and that the representative said we should put 200 gallons in right away, and that we did, is floating up out of the ground.

Down here, in NC, we have pretty much clay to work with. The backhoe came in and scooped out the clay and put in the 1000 gallon LP gas tank in the front yard. Today it rained and rained. The guy, the manager at the gas company, said that he would put in 200 gal. right away to prevent this from happening. This we did.

Unfortunately, it rained like at least 3 or 4 inches and there is some flooding. And the gas tank is floating up out of the clay. Bummer. It is like Pet Cemetary or something where the bodies just keep floating up out of the ground.

The gas company has promised to come back and re-bury the tank next week, but WTF is going to keep it from just popping back up out of the ground during next spring's rainy season?

A friend has suggested that pouring concrete under it is what will fix the problem. I dunno.

Any ideas? We are freaking out. Sure, in a nice way, cause we ain't panickers.. but still.

Tanks,
g :rose:

Re: My 1000 gallon LP gas tank is floating up!!!
 

Find a way to store all your PM's in a compartment in it, that should keep it weighted down.

Re: My 1000 gallon LP gas tank is floating up!!!
 

Bummer, but it happens. What keeps it from doing that later is the ground compacts and doesn't absorb water like it does when you first dig it.

WHY didn't they fill it completely instead of just 200gals ?

Also, don't know your terrain, but can you dig a drainage ditch out the bottom of the tank hole.....is the tank on enough elevation that you can get some natural drainage ? That's what I did with mine.

Re: My 1000 gallon LP gas tank is floating up!!!
 

Yes, they should have filled it. We have no hill. Should have filled it.

Re: My 1000 gallon LP gas tank is floating up!!!
 

Man.....what can I say.....bummer.

:rofl:

I bet it is a sight. Let me know how it turns out...Damn...:smokin:

Re: My 1000 gallon LP gas tank is floating up!!!
 

Gpond!!!!! what the hell????????


These things arent supposed to happen!

Engineering? hello!!!!! Gosh, I cannot believe it.

Maybe some reverse engineering is the plan?

Must have some great industrial grade clay and a hell of a rain? ala perfect storm?


Maybe 18" of drain rock is in order.

Re: My 1000 gallon LP gas tank is floating up!!!
 

Hay 1000 gallon Lp tanks are constructed of heavy steel and are specially painted with a mastic coating to prevent corrosion. Environmentally friendly and requiring no maintenance, tank will typically last for 30 to 40 years. And should have must have concrete underneth it my friend. look at this. after thay place it on the concrete, thay should some how drill the tanks to the concrete or something like that i think,,????

Re: My 1000 gallon LP gas tank is floating up!!!
 

WOW - ok, this answers my question posted in another thread. How much does it coast to purchase the tanks and have them delivered?

Re: My 1000 gallon LP gas tank is floating up!!!
 

I think a crude slab of concrete under it would work. The tank legs would have bolts to the slab. It wouldn't take a skilled mason to make such a slab. Then pack it down after they backfill it.

Pet Cemetary....you're killin' me!

Re: My 1000 gallon LP gas tank is floating up!!!
 

Around here when people bury something and want it to stay burried they often put down a thick layer of gravel or stone under the object to be burried, then place the object, surround with stone on the sides and then fill in the hole. This allows the water somewhere to go while its waiting to be absorbed by the soil rather than pushing up your burried object. I'm kind of suprised a cement slab would work the same unless the tanks were bolted to it. Of course we also have cement swimming pools pop out of the ground if they're allowed to get too empty right before heavy rains.

We have a lot of heavy rain down here. I got 2 feet in one night last Summer. :eek_ma:

Re: My 1000 gallon LP gas tank is floating up!!!
 

heheheh pet cemetary , it was fun long time back.

Re: My 1000 gallon LP gas tank is floating up!!!
 

Where do you live, Rev? The Amazon?

Re: My 1000 gallon LP gas tank is floating up!!!
 

Ha! No, the West coast of Fl. My neighbors were underwater for weeks, fortunately I have a half acre pond that drains my property but I still had fish swimming on my pasture for a good long while. We also have a type of mosquito, about 3/4 an inch long and real fat, they lay their eggs in the soil and can be dormant up to 8 years before they hatch. You can imagine my displeasure.

While this was an unusual ammount of rain it was also not a hurricane/tropical storm. In fact 2006 was extremely calm, 2007 is looking like it will be less so. My pond's water level has been 7 feet higher in the past than it is now. Combine this with a watertable maybe 10ft underground and you have a real problem burying anything of size. I want to get a gas tank but I won't store it above ground and I'm not sure underground will really work out too well. Out here you put stuff on stilts and mounds if you have any sense. The native tribes used to construct mounds as big as football stadiums in some cases using nothing but hand tools and sweat equity. One day The Big One will come and all the yankees and such who have built on the flood plain will be washed out to sea.

Re: My 1000 gallon LP gas tank is floating up!!!
 

No kidding. They aren't taken too kindly down there. I have a friend who lives down near Naples. She was saying the same thing. I imagine that attempting to bury a 1000gal. tank in the coastal regions of So. Florida would be a trick better left to Houdini. Good luck this hurricane season. I hear HAARP is planning some big ones in 2007.

Re: My 1000 gallon LP gas tank is floating up!!!
 

I got a dumb question here. Why are we burying the tank? :Sorry:

Re: My 1000 gallon LP gas tank is floating up!!!
 

Gpond probably has different reasons but for me it's because a cup of gasoline has about the same explosive force as a stick of dynamite and we have wildfires down here, some get HUGE. The other thing is stray bullets. A bullet won't normally ignite gasoline, but steel jacket can under the right circumstances as can incendiary and tracer. Bottom line is a stray bullet piercing my gas storage creates a fire/explosion hazard.

Re: My 1000 gallon LP gas tank is floating up!!!
 

What is a LP gas tank?

Re: My 1000 gallon LP gas tank is floating up!!!
 

Propane. Liquid Propane, I think, to be proper.

You bury the tank for several reasons. One, it looks better. Big ol' propane tank is ugly sitting right next to a pretty house. Second, fire protection. Third, protection from flying bullets, careening cars, and runaway tractors. Fourth... because we can! :ARMS1:

We've got a 500 buried, I like that it is buried for all the above reasons.

Re: My 1000 gallon LP gas tank is floating up!!!
 

GPond, I immediately thought of Fred Gywnne's character with your reference! It seems the storms are through at this point though the wind sounds rather strong.

Best of luck with the reburial.

Re: My 1000 gallon LP gas tank is floating up!!!
 

Any way to post a pic of this rising creature?

Re: My 1000 gallon LP gas tank is floating up!!!
 

:smile: Gives new meaning to Gpond.

Re: My 1000 gallon LP gas tank is floating up!!!
 

I would exume it, re-dig another foot down, put in a 6''-12'' thick concrete pad, bolt it to the pad, then cover it back up.

Re: My 1000 gallon LP gas tank is floating up!!!
 

Because it lived a good, wholesome, Christian life. :s9:


Seriously though.... SHTF bullets + full LP tank = really bad day.

Re: My 1000 gallon LP gas tank is floating up!!!
 

The other reason you bury the tank is to keep it in a climate controlled environment.

Re: My 1000 gallon LP gas tank is floating up!!!
 

Yep........here they won't fill an above ground tank to more than 80% of the rated capacity.....an underground, they will fill to 90%.

Re: My 1000 gallon LP gas tank is floating up!!!
 

LP is in liquid form when filled, and you use the gas that is 'boiled' up as the liquid reverts to gas.

That is why the max 80 above ground and the 90 below, you need room for this to happen.

gpond, I wouldn't backfill with your native dirt if clay anyway, drainage aggregate below the tank, and sand around it with a liner around the perimeter.

I dug a hole for a house once, next morning the hole was full of water, as all the clay leached water into this new found release point. I pumped, and pumped, and pumped................

Man I dislike clays

Re: My 1000 gallon LP gas tank is floating up!!!
 

I had a septic tank buried last year. They put a thick layer of gravel under it for the water to drain. Then they buried two massive concrete blocks on each side of the tank and ran steel cable over the tank between them. As of today, it is still buried (sure don't want to see that bugger again). We had torrential rain from the Nor'easter this weekend. The quiet, serene creek I live on has white water on it this morning.

Re: My 1000 gallon LP gas tank is floating up!!!
 

......... oh...yeah.....:smokin:

Re: My 1000 gallon LP gas tank is floating up!!!
 

I agree with these posts.

Suggest have them dig 18" or so deeper and put in gravel - put the tank in - then fill to mid-level around the sides of the tank with additional gravel.

this should make the clay above the tank and gravel push down - and allow water underneath to drain.

Essentially, you're relieving the pressure underneath the tank - allowing it to disperse to the bottom and sides

Re: My 1000 gallon LP gas tank is floating up!!!
 

ahahahaaa......ya'll don't understand North Carolina red clay.

By digging a hole bigger, you're simply creating a larger swimming hole for the tank. Might take a bit longer to fill up, but the effect is the same....floating tank. That's why I was asking gpond if he had a way to create a drainage ditch.

Red clay is almost impervious to water.....you can dig a hole in it, pour in water and come back in a couple days....the water will still be there except what you loose for evaporation.

Re: My 1000 gallon LP gas tank is floating up!!!
 

Is that the same as brick clay?

Re: My 1000 gallon LP gas tank is floating up!!!
 

yep..............

Re: My 1000 gallon LP gas tank is floating up!!!
 

I've got 40 years+ in heavy construction and have worked with all different types of soil and drainage conditions.

Andy has it pretty well nailed. You need to get the tank up in grade and drainage established or put the thing on a slab that outweighs the empty tank displacement volume in water.

Filling it now just sets you up for the same thing happening again sometime in the future.


Figure the cubic displacement of the tank and use for weight only the steel involved in the skin of the tank. One cubic foot of water is 62.5 pounds, and that is what you need to hold down. You can't figure on having the tank full all of the time. Figure it empty. Concrete is about twice the weight of water per cubic foot so you need to have excess weight in concrete above what the concrete itself displaces in water.


I was on a job where a creek overflowed and ran into a hole where we had a 60 foot diameter tank with one foot thick concrete base and one foot thick walls 12 inches thick and 12 foot tall at the perimeter with another concentric wall at 30 foot diameter floated. Couldn't believe my eyes. That thing weighed 600 ton. But when I ran the figures, it displaced 750 ton of water... We had three good sized pumps, but that creek just overran capacity. Believe it or not, the engineers said they would buy the job if we could get most of the muck out from under and get the thing back near plumb and level to grade +/- a foot. Lots of water jetting and mud pumping and about two weeks later we got it done.


Another job where this might be a problem we drove piling down about fifty feet (hollow tubes) and poured them full of concrete. Forget how many there were, but the piling was intended to hold down tanks that might float. The pilings were roughly on a six foot grid each way and tied into a shared footing slab.


Carver

Re: My 1000 gallon LP gas tank is floating up!!!
 

As usual, Andy is right. Georgia is known for it's clay, but North Carolina takes the cake. If you dig a hole in clay you are making a bowl. End of story. Ironic that I should be making that point since it is my tank that floated, but hey, I was relying on the advice of others who were supposed to know.

I think that a ditch witch could make a drainage path to a natural drainage ditch that we have near the road. That seems the most feasible way out of this mess. However it may be tough to convince 'those who must pay' to do that. Getting subs to come out and do what they should do, or rather 'trying' to do that, has been more difficult than I imagined. Hard to make things happen these days. Dang.

But still, a drainage pipe from the hole to the drainage ditch seems a most reasonable precaution. That is the way to go, as Andy rightly said. Now how to bend an arm to make that happen -- there is my challenge at this point. Good luck to me on that. I will persue it.

Thanks for all the suggestions and advice. Special thanks to Tn.

Re: My 1000 gallon LP gas tank is floating up!!!
 

Wish I can convince my wife that too little gas can also be a problem...

Good Luck Ponder

Golden Regards
Uncle

Re: My 1000 gallon LP gas tank is floating up!!!
 

The service line to the tank is not going to "float" with all that movement. Once it breaks you have more than a water problem.



:call: how much to fill a bomb crater?

Re: My 1000 gallon LP gas tank is floating up!!!
 

Brand new tank. No service line, yet. Thanks for thinking about us, though. That would be bad news. We lucked out on having this dry run. I am curious as to how the company will rebury a tank that already has 200 gal. inside. Seems dangerous/tricky to pick up a tank like that. Perhaps they will have to empty it first? Will be interesting to see what they intend to do. My confidence is not very high on them right now.

Re: My 1000 gallon LP gas tank is floating up!!!
 

Heck, where I'm at we have mosquitoes so big that they can't even fly anymore. They have to climb trees, jump off the branches and glide.
They try to bite you on the way down.

And the day before yesterday it rained two feet just in the time it took me to get from my truck to the house...:wink:

Re: My 1000 gallon LP gas tank is floating up!!!
 

Food For Thought

:sleepy13: better sleep on this

Re: My 1000 gallon LP gas tank is floating up!!!
 

I got them to agree to ditch-witch that black drainage pipe down to the roadside ditch. I'll take that as a plus.

I've been worried about this ever since KG posted the stuff that he did.

It is serious business. Screw up and you are toast.

Once they re-bury and we fill her up and there is a drainage pipe down to the ditch I will feel much better. You dig in clay, you make a bowl. All there is to it.

We took pictures as they buried the empty tank. This time around, with the 200-gallon FULL tank, we will be hiding deep in the back yard (in the garden, really) while they work in the front at burying that beeeee-ach.

Scary.... but will probably work out okay.

I asked the guy about making a Tn...Andy drainage pipe down to the road, and he 'caved' in and said he would do it. It makes so much sense.. He will do it. I suspect it might even work. Looking good. Appreciate the advice!

Will update if I can -- if not blown to smithereens -- I will let you know what happened.

:favorites21:

Re: My 1000 gallon LP gas tank is floating up!!!
 

Have 'em re-fill the hole with concrete and not clay if possible.



:smile: if that tank floated half-full imagine the buoyancy when empty. Any movement will snap the supply line.

Re: My 1000 gallon LP gas tank is floating up!!!
 

Hope it goes well for you and no more glitches.....:haha:

Re: My 1000 gallon LP gas tank is floating up!!!
 

If he does that then he should bolt it to the concrete so make sure you imbed some type of bolts into the cement as it drys... or even some U bolts to tie it to.......