We have a beautiful 3acre yard with pond, except our propane tank is on the side of the house next to our septic mound. Has anyone done decorative flowers or unique ways to help hide that big ugly tank?! Obviously we would clear or keep a path accessible for the tanker to refill, but looking for ideas!

So my best customers wanted this tank surround built to match their house. They're extremely picky and change their minds a lot and want things to look an extremely certain way. (You might notice that the framing is 5 ft and the final is 4ft.) There were also several Iterations of the step down.

Terrain was fairly steep and the ground was hell to work in. I had to cut tree roots as big as my arm, and chisel down with a bar through packed rock and dry clay. I had to shop vac some of the holes out because the porthole digger couldn't get the powdery dirt out. They wanted it to be the same quality work as their house and detached garage. I don't hang siding every day so I had some pains getting in the groove.

The day I finished customer drops that they had gotten quotes from contractors. My bill should have been 1700 for 34 hours of labor. They had spent 1000 in materials. Luckily they had extra siding on hand because the lumber company underestimated.

I figured I was going to be way cheaper.

The quotes from the contractors they received were HALF what the project cost. I believe one of the quotes he claimed was $1300 and that included materials.

I was super upset by this and hastily agreed to knock a couple hundred bucks off, didn't charge them for extra hardware I bought the lumber company didn't include in the BOM.

They did pay me, but this really felt crappy and took me down a couple notches. I'm not sure a contractor would have dealt with their level of BS or worked with on-the-fly design.

I just moved into a new 55+ community where each house has liquid propane service originating from a buried propane tank farm in the middle of development. It is new so the tanks were recently installed and there currently is no landscaping around them except for grass. The developers know that they need to do something for landscaping to make it appear somewhat pleasant. I heard that they were going to use fake plants because of fire/safety regulations. In my opinion, this would like crappy. I would like to know if there are any specific regulations for landscaping around buried propane tanks. I can imagine you don't want the roots of shade trees, but anything specific would be very much appreciated.