Thanks,
house on a slab? best solution would be to cut a groove in the garage slab, bury the line, and cover with mortar. Otherwise just mortar the line at an angle where the door is.
Thanks Simon, the house is on a slab. I was thinking about the mortar solution as the easiest fix.
Around here, its not allowed to burry the oil line because if it leaked it would not be visible.
I looked at the codes in NY, and you can bury the line, but they recommend you run that line in a pipe to allow for expansion and ease of replacement.
You could run the fuel line overhead and put an inline check valve?
Can you use steel pipe that would be resistant to impact damage?
Would you have a problem with corrosion? Electrolysis.
I do not know. We do not have oil fuel lines here. We have Natural gas and propane, both of which are piped with black steel pipe.
I do not know your rules. But, the black pipe could be a protective conduit or possibly the actual service pipe. I think it would be adequately protected from impact damage. Just a thought.
I don’t know, Brian. Maybe an expert will chime in. the oil tank was about 12 feet from the boiler in my last house. The oil line went up the wall, across the ceiling, and down the wall behind the boiler. A check valve about 12’’ up from the shutoff valve on the oil tank would keep the oil from dropping back into the tank, keeping a prime in the line.
It looks like that oil line is not much more than a flexible hose designed for oil. I may have one in my car, lol. Looks like it might degrade in the ground, but what do I know? Shoot, I would either re-route it up and over or slide it thru a thick pipe 
Solution is to leave it alone and advise client to be careful with anything that may come in contact with it and cause damage. Being as it’s located in the garage, it is protected from the elements. It’s obvious there is no storage or other items along that wall to cause damage. Looks like it’s doing just fine the way it is. If the client is really concerned, install pipe insulation or a pool noodle around it!
Why do inspectors always think stuff needs fixing?
Not allowed here. No way.
I would recommend impact protection and move on.
That’s what I was thinking too, Luke.
If it runs in front of the door threshold the easiest protection is to simply rout a slot in a board the width of the door (extended threshold). As Marcel mentioned buried fuel lines don’t show leakage. As a home inspector you don’t need to provide a solution just document the issue.
Yeap, if bare copper. There are, specialized, coated copper fuel lines that don’t need the sleeve such as the one in OP’s pic.
That is similar to what the gas company installed from the propane tank to my fireplace.
Coated copper tubing was uniquely designed to protect both the environment from oil contaminants and the copper tubing from corrosion.
But I don’t see how it would provide protection from damage, stepped on, hit, causing kinks or collapse.
Those are for going through (sleeve) concrete/mortar and such, I believe.
