At today’s prices, it’s quite possible in some of the larger tanks to have over £1000 of fuel sat there waiting to be pumped out by an opportunistic scumbag!. Taking simple practical steps can help you keep what’s yours.
Please post your security advice here to help others protect their oil!
The links on that site do not appear to be working properly. A nice site and a good product. What a shame.
Twice in a month. Carmarthen oil thieves are at it. Beware anyone who has an easily visible tank. We are now errecting a large shed around our tank. Might even put an electric circuit wire inside to give th b——s a bit of a shock if they try breaking in to it.
Slightly off-topic, but someone I knew had a neighbor who was always wanting to scrounge oil for his car. After many years of this, he got fed up and decided to mix a can of oil with an abrasive material. We he next scrounged some oil, it ruined his engine.
I don’t know if there’s any way to contaminate the oil
I must say, the concept of a padlock on a plastic tank is a bit silly.
I’ve been thinking of buying a large tank (3500 litres) which will hold enough oil for a year. Then buy oil only in the summer, when the price is lower. Also, buying larger quantities you can get a cheaper deal. But of course that makes the potential loss via theft much larger.
Karen
please be aware that once you have had oil stolen once, the thieves know you will fill up and be back again. Happened to us. Thanks to a tank alarm and the house lighting up like a christmas tree the tank wasn’t fully drained. Also helped that following our 999 call, police arrived very quickly with blues & twos and shortly after the police helicopter .
you now also have google street scene tipping of the oil bandits!!
the scumbags (travellers/pikies) use the oil in their mobile homes costing about 50k a go. so it dosent get sold .
if it does one of the compatriot travellers buys it.
in passing remember that a combination boiler will save storage tanks but are better suited to less than 3 output systems as pressure drop is sometimes a problem.
as an oftec registered engineer it is my duty to inform you that it is not now permissable to enclose an oiltank in an inflammable building.
(shed.)
Hello,
We have a very old oil fired boiler and tank and will need to replace it soon. Can anyone recommend a good system that doesn’t cost the earth and is economical to run. I’ve heard that condensing boilers are good and would save us the cost of istalling new water tanks too. Any advise gladly received.
u r right, its from condensation within the air above the oil level, the more full the less the problem. Water is heaveir than fuel but a jerry can sounds way too much. When I do this to aircraft tanks the most is a few drops in 150 litres. Sometime get a bit or neat fuel hold it against a bit of white paper and note the colour add a few drops of water and see them sink the hard thing is if there is alot of water is spotting the line where it changes from water to fuel. Aircraft left out overnight can have this problem when the rubber seal around the fuel filler cap allows outside condensation or rain to drip in.
Hi all,
We have developed an oil tank alarm and is available online called OilSecure. Just visit http://www.oilsecure.com and read all about it. Buy on-line and when you check out enter the coupon code BOILER and you will get 15% off the OSA1001 or OSA1002. Coupon valid til 30 April 2009. Hope this helps you all looking for a solution to oil theft.
I checked my home insuarace the other day and it clearly stated a figure (£2000) of loss of oil due to theft and some other reasons. So you should ? be covered
Looking on the site to find oil prices and got distracted! Never occurred to me that the tank/contents were at risk even with our sad experience two years ago when our pet donkey was stolen from her stable in our garden (two dogs and they weren’t disturbed). The unspeakables came well prepared – cutters for the padlock and not only did they take Lottie but her 14′ oak 5-barred gate too. Please take a couple of minutes to have a look at http://www.freewebs.com/missingdonkey. She may be living near you and my family and I are desperate for news of her, thank you.
ps our tank is surrounded and shrouded by leyllandi (spelling?), fine until I’m ordered to cut them down!
I agree, it amazes me that tanks are put in the open in view of every low life out there. We have just moved our tank to our rear garden and put high, sturdy fencing and a locked gate between the front and back. Yes a determined thief will still steel oil but they would equally break into a locked house, so the answer is deterrent. Don’t allow your oil company to turn up when they like to fill your tank when your out. Get them to book the delivery when your in and can unlock the gate/tank when they arrive and lock it when they depart. We have 6 oil companies that will deliver in our area and having checked non have an issue with the driver not being in the line of site of his lorry when filling the tank.
Boiler Juice are advertising what looks to be a retro fit locking filler cap on the front page
make a dummy tank and fill it with water, then they’ll contaminate the rest of their oil!!!
Purchase a shed slightly larger than the tank and construct it around the tank. You now have a shed and not an oil tank. If the crooks choose to steal your lawnmower they will find the tank instead and not be tooled up for nicking that. You can leave it unlocked for the delivery and ma\ke it as secure as you can against a break in.
I had my oil stolen 3 times, my solution was to buy a Rottweiler, problem solved! I have a great pet and great security! No one can walk past my driveway without me knowing forget about a stranger even trying to get into my garden!
reading these comments with interest – I live in a remote area of North Yorkshire and although we have not had any oil stolen the neighbouring farmer did have last year. I already have a continuous readout of my oil tank contents in my kitchen (calibrated in litres for my round tank) via an ultrasonic level device so I will be aware of any sudden change in level. What I will do next (when I get around to it) is use a float switch set at a low level connected via a relay control circuit to the 24 hr circuit of my security alarm c/w a switch to disable it should I choose to take the level down below my “alarm level”. Any electrician with a bit of control circuit knowledge will be able to knock this together. I already have a dog but it’s a Cocker Spaniel and the most it will do to any intruder is bark and piss on their shoes!
For those interested in alarming their tanks I have had some success using wire-free house alarm systems. I put the control unit in the house and embedded a wireless door sensor inside a wooden gate. (You could surface mount it but it needs some weather protection). The sensor is powerful enough to transmit quite a long way across an open space provided the receiver is close to the house wall (say, just inside the window). Door sensors are easy to conceal, you avoid all the false alarms caused by PIRs and the batteries last for ages. They only really consume power when they transmit. I only replaced the battery once in 10 years.
In my case I didn’t use an external sounder, just relied on the internal buzzer to wake me in the night. In 10 years it only went off once. I caught a policeman poking around!
There are plenty of these systems available on eBay for £50 or less.
Security lights won’t work – it just gives the thief more light to see what they are doing! If you think that you will see it come on and catch them doing it, then you’re probably wrong – you’ll spend your time either asleep and won’t see it, or you’ll spend your time looking out the windows at cats and foxes!
dont forget to cover the top of your tank too as many are using google earth to find them! gawd you cant have anything can you these days! so disguise it from above just to be safe
If you sleep within hearing distance of the tank, it’s worth considering noisy surfaces such as gravel around it, and creaking garden/yard gates are a bonus.
You could also try placing ceramic planters around the tank which you can drag out of the way easily in daylight for filling , but which would be noisy and timewasting for thieves at night. (These can also be clustered around pipelines to protect from accidental damage)
For the parts of the tank which the delivery man doesn’t need to access, thorny plants are another possible deterrent.
Another factor not so far mentioned is that if tanks are completely drained by thieves, it might need an engineer’s visit to restart and check the boiler, especially if the debris from the bottom of the tank has been exposed.
you sound as upset as me at the thieves who take oil im a single parent and work hard for my fuel and its so easily takenits ok for ppl to advise that you dont put in more than £150 worth of fuel but then you dont benefit from the discount if you buy in bulk do you know if i can get some insurance to cover my fuel in the event of theftthis may work out cheaper in the long run?????????????
Best advice I can give is to make it as awkward looking for the thieves to steal YOUR oil, so they will move on elsewhere. Good physical deterants such as padlocks, high fences, locked gates to your gardens etc. I have read many people recommending cctv. My experience is that this is not much of a deterrant. It may aid the capture of a criminal afterwards, but with the very weak punishment given on conviction at court, many ‘career’ thieves will happily take the chance. And your system will need to be high quality, therefore expensive, in order to make it worth it in the first place. As for reporting thefts, always keep your delivery notice and payment receipt. False claims of theft are also on the rise, so the Plicde will want to ensure a theft actually took place.
The most important thing is to stop unauthorise access to your tank when
it contain an amount of oil worth stealing. So my advice to Axelson is to
employ any suitable protection that suit his environment and then remove
it a day or so before the delivery is due. At this stage there should only be about
£150(max.) worth of oil left .
Hi
read all of the above with interest, im curious, having attempted to drain water from
the base of my almost empty steel tank prior to refilling, this acumulates from condensate inside as i understand it. I found this task took an age just filling a jerrycan from the drain point.
So a determined thief must have a pump and a tank big enough to contain
300 + stolen litres of liquid gold and plenty of time!
who are these bastards!?
QUESTION
WHO ARE THE PERSONS BUYING THE STOLEN OIL I KNOW NO ONE BUYING SO WHATS HAPPENED TO IT?
I take it you have a condensing boiler ours uses 1.500 liters every 14 weeks the old boiler used the same amount every 10 months.
The thing with plastic tanks you cant protect them in any way as the low lifes just cut a hole in the side making a hole it matters not if they waste that valuable liquid gold
Though my tank is at the rear of the house and so invisible from the road, I am planning to build a cheap shed lined with plasterboard over it. Doesn’t stop the bowser stalkers though.
Hi
I had to oil thefts in two months so I took a step that anyone with a garage/cellar/outbuildings can do. I bought specilaist indoor fuel oil storage tanks!
I actually put mine in my cellar which is perfectly safe and legal. I found the units on the internet via http://www.rotex.co.uk, a german manufacturer with UK offices.
To fill up the lorry driver just sticks the hose down through a cellar window and sorted!
It was worth noting though that one delivery driver refused to believe that it was legal and I had to call Oftec to ok it with him.
No one will ever steal let alone find my oil now!
at least extracting via a fuel line is slow and inconvenient to thieves – so much lower risk. I think they would prefer easier targets where they can use a large pipe & pump …
be careful with enclosing a tank – check building regs and avoid fire from fumes etc
Most ideas good but burying tank is impractical for most people. Cost! cost of digging/backfilling hole, suitable tank, covers, locks, pump (most people would need to rely on pumped oil instead of gravity feed) etc etc. Installation and ongoing costs.