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Weird liquid seeping UP from garage floor! Help!

3 years ago

Hello - I am completely stumped by a weird yellow liquid that seems to continually appear on my garage floor. I have ruled out a leak from my car - had it checked out and it was dry, so I covered the spot with a towel and found that the yellow liquid was rising UP from the floor.

It doesn't have a distinct smell, and it doesn't appear flammable. I thought that maybe there could be an undetected oil tank under the slab, but there is no crawl space or basement under the garage. Also, looking at the history of the house - it was built in the early 60s and always appeared to be natural gas heated. Because the garage area is on a slab, I wouldn't think there are pipes running underneath either (sewage line exits through basement on other side of the house).

The yellow color obviously makes me a bit nervous - I started thinking PCB or some other carcinogen! But I don't know how to test for that. Regardless, not sure where that would come from either. The house is in a suburban area of NYC, about 20 miles from the city, but again, built in the 60s on what was a heavily wooded area purely suburban township.

Any insight from the professionals would be greatly appreciated...
If I need more formalized analysis, what kind of service provider could help me find what this is?

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Comments (4)

ci_lantro
3 years ago
Attached or detached garage?

Are you sure that the garage is original to the house? Given that the house is early '60's vintage, the garage may have been added some years later (and more likely that the site wasn't pristine woodland.)

You could cut out a foot square section of the slab, investigate and then patch the cutout...
shivece
3 years ago
The state Department of Environmental Protection should be able to either do an analysis for you or direct you to someone who can.
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M Dog
Original Author
3 years ago
Thank you for the reply. Yes I am pretty certain the garage is original to the house. House was built in 1962 and real estate records in the mid-60s show the house with a garage. There was an addition made to the back of the house (not the garage area) in the early 2000s.

The area was nothing but woods and farms in the 1950s - not like areas really close to NYC which had chemical plants / manufacturing.
cat_ky
3 years ago
Cud have been a dumping ground for barrels from a plant at one time, or could be not much of anything, but, I would want it checked out.

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