VaporRemed: A non-intrusive solution for home heating oil odors.
A case study: pollution complaint #2007-2014N.
Home heating oil odor is quite strong and is considered harmful to both humans and pets. It is common practice is to cut open the basement and excavate the impacted soil for disposal at the landfill and replace the excavated area with clean soil. Despite the fact that in most cases the insurance company pays for the repairs, a homeowner is not entirely thrilled by the possibility of having intrusive approaches to cleanup after a heating oil spill.
In this case, a resident near Washington, DC had reported a strong odor in the living area of their house probably emanating from their garage. Robert Wagner, Program Manager for Apex Companies, visited the site and completed a limited site characterization as required by Virginia DEQ and recorded that the source of smell may not be coming from an underground storage tank as the tank did not contain any residual fuel or water. However, samples of soil near and about the underground storage tanks showed a very high concentration of 43,600 ppm of Total Petroleum Hydrocarbons (TPH) which much higher than the levels normally allowed in saturated soil.
The homeowner requested that the project manager use a remediation process with minimum damage to the property. After consultation with DEQ, it was decided to use VaporRemed for on-site remediation and that the UST (underground storage tanks). Five gallons of VaporRemed was used for the treatment of soil, concrete, and the pavement. The TPH in the soil was reduced to 143 ppm (mg/kg) in soil and the odor was considerably reduced in the garage and none in the living area of the residence. Based on the hand auger soil sample results and the limited amount of risk to human health regarding the odor in the garage, Apex recommended closure of the pollution complaint
Virginia DEQ after examining the report and confirming that the source of contamination is non-existent and that the levels of contamination have been effectively reduced, issued a letter for closure of the pollution complaint. We were happy to be part of this project.
