When our house was built in the 1960s, there wasn’t a city water line, so all the houses had a tank like this one. Rainwater was collected from the gutters to supply the house.

When we bought the house in 2024, it had long since been connected to city water and sewer, but the tank was still there, under the deck, collecting rainwater. The water discharged out an overflow pipe near the top and went … somewhere.

The engineering report we got warned us that the tank should go. It was already leaning a bit, and having all that weight under the house would continue to put unnecessary downhill pressure on the soil.

So, we found the right guy to get it emptied, cut up, and hauled away. Two skinny but hearty young men, a concrete saw, wheelbarrow, and truck got us most of the way there in a couple of days.

Next we will put in a series of new retaining walls to terrace our way down the hill so that house will be sitting on a more stable-looking platform. I don’t actually know what impact that would have if we have some catastrophic storm… sometimes whole hillsides just give way. But it will definitely make us feel better about living on a sloping lot.