What Happened
A home owner in Armagh recently discovered a drip from the fuel filter at their oil tank. The oil leak from fuel filter was slowly dripping and could have been going on for several months. It always seems that the issue is small, however when the volume of oil in each drip is multiplies by the frequency….ten multiplied by the duration often the volume of oil can be extremely surprising!
The customer asked Gaea to attend their property and give them sone reassurance.
The property was attended the following day and a survey conducted alongside the home owner.
Investigation
A drilled borehole survey was conducted involving 34 sample points. A site pan was created from this data and a vapour plume informed the next step in the investigation.
A hand auger was used to collect samples from specific depths in 20cm increments. The type of material was catalogued along with the VOC concentrations. A number of soils samples were also taken using the auger for analysis to determine the speciated TPH CWG suite and waste acceptance criteria analysis.
what we found
The investigation confirmed the impact to be less than initially anticipated. Soil vapour results along with visual assessment made the sill look significantly larger than it really was. A small hotspot removal was all that was required and the client was entirely capable of executing this themselves with advices from Gaea.
Remedial works
The client under the supervision of Gaea removed the hotspot of contamination rapidly removing the risk completely so there was no on-going worry.
Validation
Six soil samples were collected from the base and sides of the excavation and one liquid sample was collected of waters that leached into the excavation during the works.
The analytical results received from the UKAS accredited laboratory confirmed that all of the samples were well below the acceptable thresholds for non-residential property.
Reinstatement
The backfilling was carried out once the results were received by Gaea and took all of 20 minutes.
Turn around - savings
The client avoided costly fees from alternative consultants who would have prolonged the issue.
Once notified Gaea were on site
