Water in heating oil tank - who do i get to drain it?

[sarahfed]

How do I get rid of water in a heating oil tank?

My parents' house has been empty for a few months and we are clearing it ready for sale. Its in a rural area and there is no main gas so their house uses heating oil.

Recently I tried the heating and it failed to work. After making sure the tank wasnt empty I booked a heating engineer who carried out a service and made the boiler work. He warned me that there was water in the oil tank and said ideally I need to remove it. He wasnt very foirthcoming about how I do it and doing some internet searching it seems I could get a pump but my question is how easy is this in practice? And what do I do with the polluted water? Alternatively is there a company I can call in to do this?

Any help / advice welcome!

Depends where you are. There may be a disposal company who will come out to you. The oil company (who delivers the heating oil to your parents address) may be able to point you in the right direction.

The cost of a proffesional job, ie being sure you have completely removed all water, and made sure it won't get in again might not be a lot less than a replacement. Just replace and have the line to the house flushed at the same time. The tanks are about 1k new.

We had the same issue and found that while pumping the water out isn't difficult, disposing of the oily water properly is the tricky part, as it can't go down the drain. We called a specialist tank cleaning company who did it all for a couple of hundred quid. We'd dealt with water in the wrong sort of tank before too when we had issues with our water heater a few years ago! https://www.mesa-plumbing.com/plumbing/water-heater-services/. Searching for "oil tank cleaning" in your parents' area might bring up some options.