Although inspecting for hazardous materials is not part of a regular home inspection, a good home inspector will look for any obvious signs of possible contaminants around the property. This photo was taken at the courtyard of a condominium complex. It is the cover to a monitoring well (one of several monitoring wells found at this property.) These wells are installed to monitor ground water around contaminated areas, such as a gasoline station that had leaking gas storage tanks or a building that had underground fuel oil storage tanks.
Upon further investigation it was found that this condominium complex did have underground fuel oil tanks which had leaked in the past. The cleanup and monitoring expense has exceeded $80,000 to date.