Removal & Decommissioning
Oil Tank Removal & Cold CuttingUnderground Tank RemovalsTank DecommissioningDecommissioning & Foam FillingPlant & Machinery RemovalWaste Oil DisposalInstall, Clean & Maintain
Commercial Fuel Tank InstallationOil & Fuel Tank CleaningFuel PolishingOil Tank InspectionsUltrasonic Thickness TestingOil Tank RefurbishmentEnvironmental Services View all services →
Britteco cleans, empties and decommissions commercial fuel and oil tanks inside the city of Manchester, from Ancoats and Openshaw to Wythenshawe and the airport. Northern jobs are planned and run from our Harrogate base.
Inside the Manchester City Council boundary only 193 of 214,735 households heat with oil alone, roughly one in a thousand. So nearly every tank we are asked about here belongs to an organisation rather than a home: a hospital boiler house, a bus garage, a warehouse yard or a building that is about to be gutted.
The big users are easy to picture. Manchester Royal Infirmary, Wythenshawe Hospital, North Manchester General and The Christie all depend on standby generators, and generator day tanks and bulk tanks need fuel that will actually burn when the mains fails. Manchester Airport and the industrial estates around Sharston and Roundthorn keep diesel for ground equipment, sprinkler pumps and fleet vehicles. To the east, Openshaw, Gorton and Newton Heath still have engineering works, trade counters and transport yards on their old industrial land.
Then there is the building boom. Mills in Ancoats, warehouses in the Northern Quarter and old garages on the radial roads are converted or cleared, and surveys keep turning up tanks that nobody listed: a boiler tank in a basement, a buried tank under a forecourt, a steel tank behind a former workshop. Those have to be emptied, cleaned and made safe before the contractor can carry on.
A Manchester job for a mechanical and electrical contractor, published as a case study.
Corroded access points, around 3,000 litres of old diesel and sludge to pump out, then both underground tanks filled with foam and left safely in place.
View the Manchester case study →Most city jobs are shaped by access, working hours and what is happening to the building next.
Listed roughly in the order the requests come in.
Run out of heating oil or diesel in Manchester?
24/7 emergency heating oil, kerosene and diesel delivery from 100 litres, including nights, weekends and bank holidays.
Manchester sits in the Environment Agency’s Greater Manchester, Merseyside and Cheshire area. The Irwell marks the boundary with Salford, the Mersey runs along the southern edge past Didsbury and Northenden, and the Irk and Medlock cross the city partly in culverts. Oil that escapes into a drain can be in one of those rivers quickly, so leaking tanks, weeping valves and broken bunds are treated as urgent.
Any business storing more than 201 litres of oil falls under the Control of Pollution (Oil Storage) (England) Regulations 2001, which in practice means a bund holding at least 110% of the tank and sound pipework and fill points. Small yards and basements make that hard, which is why we see so many tanks squeezed into corners with no secondary containment.
On every job we leave the evidence behind: Waste Transfer or Consignment Notes for what was taken away, and a degassing certificate or certificate of disposal when a tank is retired. Developers, insurers and council building control usually ask for exactly those.
Commercial tank work across the whole city, including these districts.
Britteco cleans commercial fuel and oil tanks across the city, from the centre out to Wythenshawe and the airport. Jobs are run by our northern team from Harrogate, and we can work outside normal hours where a site has to keep going.
Send us photos and any drawings. We pump out whatever is left, clean and de-gas the tank, then either cut it out or foam fill it in place, and give you the certificates your contractor and building control will want.
We agree the plan with your estates team first, usually with temporary fuel supply or a phased clean. The diesel is polished and returned where it is still good, so the generator stays ready.
Yes. Underground petrol and diesel tanks are emptied, made gas free and certified, then removed or filled with foam, depending on what the site will become.
It depends on the tank size, how much sludge is in it, access and working hours. Photos and the tank capacity are usually enough for us to give a fixed quote.
County, region and neighbouring areas with their own pages.
Tell us the address, the tank size and what is in it. We will come back with a plan, a price and a date.
