To be annoyed with this stink.

[speakout]

From 8am today, and much of his week the stench of slurry in the air has been unbearable. It's still stinking outside and as high temperatures are predicted this weekend I am dreading a weekend with no windows open. I live in a town of 12 thousand people 8 miles from the city centre, not on a farm.
Anyone else affected by this rancid stench?

Well it’s hard to know because you could literally be anywhere and you don’t even say what it is. Why does it smell? Is it your neighbours? Your drain? The road drains...?

I’m annoyed by the stink from next door. Every time we get a nice sunny day, they light a bloody fire in their garden. Christ knows what they burn - fossilised shit by the smell of it. I can’t hang washing out, and I’ve just been out for 20mins with the DC, had a coughing fit from the smoke and we’ve come back inside stinking of smoke. We’ve brought it up with them before, got an “oh sorry”, then it happens again

Can anyone else hear that buzzing noise?

It's slurry- sorry I thought people would know what that was.

Slurry is the thick liquid drained out of the bottom of milking- and other agricultural animal sheds. It contains animal faeces and urine mixed to a thick liquid then sprayed by tractor onto fields at certain times of the year. Can go on for weeks at a time.
It smells as bad as it sounds.
I can't even open my windows.

Sorry we have crossed wires here, I know what slurry is but you’re making it sound like the whole town stinks but no ones going to know from a random ask if anyone else with no details and as you don’t live on a farm I assumed it wouldn’t actually be slurry but a smell from the drains etc. It’s just a bit of a vague question to be asking. Are you sure it isn’t the drains? Or have your neighbours been gardening? Because if it’s the former call the council or a plumber. If it’s the latter, shit on their lawn.

It appears I have a real obsession with drains...

My corner of the south west is not slurry smelling.

HTH?

clockworklime

ipswitchwitch: Dennis Nielsen used to have bonfires......

@mountains Nooo! I’m in the middle of reading I’ll Be Gone in the Dark and this isn’t helping!

I live beside 6 farms on outskirts of Glasgow and also originally from Fife so farmland smells I get.

Best tip is just breathe it in and think of the lovely veggies in summer/August. Try living in countryside during Hand and Foot disease with the animals in late 90s/00 - place smelled of hamburgers for months due to pyres in the fields.

As for neighbours - some areas need a licence to burn - does yours? :)

Mountains, I keep making jokes to DH about the neighbours burning evidence since they have so many fires! You may be on to something....

gryffen I’ll have to look into the license thing. Some different neighbours had a bonfire that went out of control and burned their entire garden down. The tits.

We used to have 2 pig farms in the village, and the slurry stench was year round. It was so so awful we never used to be able to use the garden in the summer or have people round. But it was just part of life tbh. It went on for years until a local resident just lost it, and started a massive campaign.... it was even on the local news. It got stopped though after a battle.

But other farmers still use slurry in the area, sometimes up to 6/8 miles away and it's absolutely vile if the wind is blowing our way. It can't be decent to breathe in, can it? You have my sympathy.

Ipswichwitch you need to phone your local environmental health. We used to have a neighbour who lit a daily fire instead of using their waste bins. Council very swiftly dealt with it. Contrary to popular belief, it's not legal to light bonfires and affect your neighbours - and there are no laws saying you can light in the evenings etc.

I live in a rural town and have a drive through the countryside to/from work. I swear I drove through three different clouds of stink today on the way home. There’s time’s I’ve gagged getting out of the car at school or nursery too. But it’s all part of life I suppose - and you don’t need to be next to a farm to smell it, by a long shot! It travels and lingers.

It happens where I live (town of 22k people, surrounded by countryside) for a couple of weeks most springs. Every year, someone posts on the local online forum about the vile smell, and gets the piss ripped out of them for being townie DFLs.

I haven't noticed the smell yet this year, so I think they might have done it a couple of weeks ago when the wind was in the east, as opposed to the more usual southwesterly. It doesn't bother me, it's part and parcel of being surrounded by agricultural land imo. I prefer the smell of slurry for a couple of weeks a year to the smell of traffic fumes year round.

Meh we live in a small town surrounded by farms therefore Fields. Yes the smell of slurry and muckspreading can be stomach churningly bad when first smelt but you get used to it.
If you don't like it then move city centre

CocoaGin thank you for understanding!

The smell has been across the whole town today- 3 miles around.
I believe NI has a total ban, and UK farmers are only allowed to spread at certain times.
It's a different planet from spreading manure- which has been fermented and rotted- that is a "farmy" smell, but slurry is simply vile and in a different league.

Last year we had an awful stink which was a mixture of human waste and animal slurry.
Don’t mind muck spreading/farm smells but the industrial fug of people shit was horrendous and many folk complained.
Are you sure it’s not just agriculture animal smells and not something humanish? (not envy)

We have an issue where I am in Lancashire with the smell from a landfill site. It's been going on for MONTHS and it's hideous. So you have my sympathy.

It's often the waste from septic tanks. That's the disgusting smell. Animal waste is nowhere near as bad to be fair.

NI does not have a total ban....what do you think the farmers would do with the slurry if they had?? Do you understand the reasons why farmers use slurry in this way?

ThymeLord is that in Preston? Whenever I drive through, there's certain areas that have a strong methane / industrial chemical smell.

I must be weird because I actually quite like the smell of slurry as long as it's not too strong and is purely from animals I grew up in the middle of the countryside (live in a big town now) and it reminds me of home.

@JadziaSnax yes, near Preston.