Neighbours biomass smoke is ruining our house (and health of unborn child?)

[TheCornishGoodLife]

We moved house 4 months ago and really stretched ourselves to get it because we loved it so much.
Turns out our neighbours have a biomass boiler that pumps out black smoke across our house and garden every single day from about 4pm-9pm and it’s really getting me down. Now that the weather is warmer, we can’t have any doors or windows open at all, we can’t be out/sit out in the garden during that time because it stinks and hurts your chest, we can’t put any washing out. The smell also seems to seep into the house as well.
The smoke doesn’t affect them because it always blows away from them, right over our house and you get a horrible smoky haze in our garden for hours. It’s like living next to someone that has a big bonfire next to you every single day.
On top of that, I’m quite worried about the health effects of this (plus I’ve just found out I’m pregnant so that’s a double worry).
Ive read up about biomass boilers and used right, they should have a clean burn. So they’re clearly not using it right/burning rubbish to try to save money.
It’s such a shame because this house was supposed to be THE house, and now I’m starting to want to rush to get the redecorating done and move again.
We are super keen to keep good neighbourly relations - is it reasonable for me to say something - have we left it long enough since moving in? Am I being overly sensitive? Is there a gentle way of approaching this?
Thank you so much!!

You’d like to think that this would be the case, but he definitely wasn’t joking about burning the carcasses 😕 He said how it’s ridiculously expensive to get them disposed of otherwise, and he always just chucks them in the biomass with everything else. Going by the other things they seem to do, it does match up unfortunately.
He is more of a hobby farmer than a proper farmer - he’s semi retired from a professional career and doesn’t have that many sheep (15/20ish), so I think he gets away with more stuff in a way due to that. She is also very a senior professional so you’d think they would know better!
Thank you though - we will definitely be more assertive with this to try and get it sorted.

You’d like to think that this would be the case, but he definitely wasn’t joking about burning the carcasses 😕 He said how it’s ridiculously expensive to get them disposed of otherwise, and he always just chucks them in the biomass with everything else. Going by the other things they seem to do, it does match up unfortunately.
He is more of a hobby farmer than a proper farmer - he’s semi retired from a professional career and doesn’t have that many sheep (15/20ish), so I think he gets away with more stuff in a way due to that. She is also very a senior professional so you’d think they would know better!
Thank you though - we will definitely be more assertive with this to try and get it sorted.

Legislation requires farmers to dispose of fallen stock correctly and this legislation has banned burning and burial of fallen stock including still births and afterbirth.
This is a trading standards issue and something they are very interested in as often the farmer is non-compliant on other issues they are involved in, but the fallen stock legislation is the easiest one to regulate.

You have done yourself a disservice by being so meek and apologetic about it, it makes it sound like you think you’re being unreasonable to complain. You need to be firm about this. There’s nothing to lose by being firm as you already seem decided to sell your house again if they don’t stop or descend into being nightmare neighbours.

Thank you, you are right. My husband is more of a worry because he’s a firefighter so is already at greater risk of breathing in nasty things anyway. I’ll ask my midwife about it as well in my first appointment next week. Thank you

Thank you, we ended up fencing ourselves in eventually with a wall of 2m fences everywhere! And sadly we’ve heard that they’ve already given the new owners a lot of grief.
We are also really surprised that they had permission to put the boiler and flue where they did. It’s very odd. We will definitely look into this.
Next I think we’ll be looking at the most remote property we can find!

Yes this is the issue unfortunately. And we definitely do want to sell this house in the not too distant future. This is why we never reported our last neighbours either and had to just fence them out instead. We will definitely avoid reporting them because of this, thank you

Do make a complaint (both environmental health and trading standards depts should be interested in this if you go in armed with what you now know) but stop being apologetic about it and do not say anything like "this is supposed to be our forever/dream home", "we came to the countryside to breathe fresh air" etc. If this is a truly rural community, it won't go down well and you might find yourself lumped with the types who want all cockerels silenced and no harvesting to be done at night.

@TheCornishGoodLife burning animal carcasses in a biomass boiler requires a special permit. just because he is a farmer does not mean he has or will be granted this permit. notify the council environmental department with details of what is happening.

You have definitely been too meek - he will think he can push you around. I would say or write to him to say that the smoke is unacceptable and needs to stop.

Can you take a video diary and buy an air quality meter like this and take daily reading for a few weeks?

www.amazon.co.uk/Temtop-Particle-Detector-Professional-Accurate/dp/B0787WCW2G/ref=mp_s_a_1_5_sspa?dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.8XKc-AWt-loRmCXIpWN3gwiNAh219F2Vg_QRSIe8pZ7kNu_XvFCt7abgSVHFe9i6vd1B2Qv2cwzDm4D2hycUebCoe2eghrTXeS0Or9M-WKeuGEOiYUHLdFiDTZaVL0XoSVMCpnfBvXlUkRPeLR5BUF8SG4jf1qlOFs1Dx_kZVJmP1RVLGwJuxTbji3gStKIfucne8tWUjmsWJbmIdNa37A.6Vc8J1LALPMN0jARKOn7CwIHOsHI7VFN-wwJ3E5wIYE&dib_tag=se&keywords=air+pollution+monitor&qid=1745220273&sr=8-5-spons&sp_csd=d2lkZ2V0TmFtZT1zcF9waG9uZV9zZWFyY2hfbXRm&psc=1

I think unfortunately you are going to have to go down the formal route with this arsehole as he doesn’t care about neighbourly relations.

Just out of interest, why did the previous owners of your house sell up and move...? Assuming the biomass boiler isn't a new installation, could it have been the reason? I take it that they didn't declare any issues in their legal pack when they sold

Bad luck OP 😔When I was a child, the next door farmer used to burn pig carcasses. I'll never fully get rid of the taste of that septic fog that would hang in the air. Hope you can resolve this.
Best of luck with your growing baby OP!!

Agree with @Floatlikeafeather2, don’t mention moving to the countryside for fresh air! Wait until it’s slurry spreading time and you’ll realise how bad the countryside can smell.

He's not a farmer, he's a knobhead with a handful sheep and a complete disregard to those farming and living around him. At least with the numbers he has there will only be one or two lambs to dispose of, and if he can't afford the £10 cost of disposal he shouldn't have his hobby sheep in the first place.

He should not 'get away' with anything due to low sheep numbers, if you have sheep, 2 or 2000 you comply with the same regulations for keeping sheep. If he doesn't, report him to defra - idiots like him shouldn't have livestock - the fallen livestock collection is there for a reason.

Film the smoke, film him putting 'other' stuff in to the boiler. I'm not sure how the smoke is constantly in your garden given that the wind blows from different directions, if it is truly everyday there must be a weird wind tunnel, and that can be investigated/changed.

I would however slightly change your idea of moving to the countryside if you can. You've essentially moved in to a giant factory floor of food production. This comes with noise, smells, pesticides etc, and doesn't always mean that it's only there for you to enjoy freshest air and outdoor space, especially if you live in converted farm buildings close to actual farms. But your neighbour is a knobhead, is there any other neighbours to back you up?

Oh I feel really sorry for you. We've had awful neighbours in the past and ended up in a dispute with them that we then had to resolve before we could sell.

But this sounds vile. Even with my past history I would be ringing the Council about this.

Hi @TheCornishGoodLife this sounds awful. Really feel for you.

I would be tempted to get some pollution readings first and also some pictures or recordings of the haze and follow it round so you can see it comes from their chimney/ boiler flue. Get a bit of a history over a few weeks.

I would then invite them over for an impromptu drink/ coffee when the boiler is on.
Then I would show them the recordings/ videos and any readings (someone posted a link to an air quality monitor) whilst they’re in your home and can hopefully also see the reality.

I would say it’s making your lives intolerable and that you’re pregnant and aka what are they going to do about it? If they are dismissive again, I would then tell them you will have to follow up with the council and that this is a shame as you wanted good relations but obviously you can’t live like this.

Even though you have to declare this if you come to sell, if you have readings and picture evidence and can send all this to the council along with a diagram of where the boiler is located and its size - it’s very likely you will win a case and your neighbours will have to stop using it or relocate it further away.

This happened with a friend of mine re aircon vents which were spewing air and noise over her garden. (Not half as bad as your situation) and she won and the council made the other property relocate them.

Good luck - really sorry you’re going through this - environmental noise or any impact on your home is very stressful. X

Isn’t it illegal to burn animal carcasses? What a prick

A biomass boiler should be clean and not pumping out black smoke. Call your Environmental Health department and report this issue. They are breaking a number of regulations.

Definitely contact the council and environmental health as burning carcasses is not okay!! He was edgy because he knows this. Do not suffer in silence @TheCornishGoodLife . Good luck with your pregnancy too! X

Hire a big air blower and blow it all back at them. Only joking. Or am I 😆. Seriously I know what you are going through. There's an ex farmer down our road who burns tyres mattresses and God knows what else. It's awful. Hope you get some resolution.

I think this is not a neighbourly dispute but an environmental one.

Rather than reporting to police for antisocial behaviour, which woukd need to be declared when you sell, coyld uou report anonymously to either police or environment agency that carcasses are being disposed of illegally? This is not s neighbourly dispute really and can be dealt with anonymously

You are right - it is really unreasonable and he’s behaving really badly. It does seem absolutely ridiculous and penny pinching unnecessarily. I think they probably do know it’s an issue but are too stubborn to change it (it probably cost a bomb to have it installed).
We were amazed they were allowed to put their flue so close to their house and our house. Especially as they’re thatched, so it is also a fire risk added to that! They also smoke themselves out with the boiler but it doesn’t seem to bother them weirdly.
It’s sad because our previous house backed onto farmland and a farm, and the farm was lovely! Organic beef - we had lovely cows that would pop their heads over the garden fence in the summer and the farmer was lovely and no bother at all. The odd day of muck spreading wasn’t an issue because it wasn’t very often. And it was much larger scale farming than our new neighbour, so we thought the new house would be okay. The new neighbour only has about 15 sheep and a handful of chickens and turkeys. They’ve only got about 20 acres or scrubby, hilly land further away from the house, so not really enough for a big production line luckily. They make their money through her work (she’s very senior in the NHS ironically), and holiday lets - they have a few shepherds huts in their fields. They’ve converted the main farm building into a luxury sauna and swim spa for the holidays lets, so thankfully they’re not too noisy. The irony is that they seem to be very into their wildlife and environmental conservation and say they hate the use of chemicals and pesticides on one hand, but then pump black smoke into the air everyday on the other!
Unfortunately we don’t have any other neighbours sadly - I wish we did in this situation. It’s a shame because in some
ways they’re ideal neighbours (quiet, keep themselves to themselves), apart from this massive issue!

What does the rest of the community feel about him? Have they always lived in the community or are they 'in comers'. It might be worth thinking politically about this in a neighbourhood sense, especially if you do want to live there for a while?

Get Your midwife to do a CO2 test. That will give an indication of how much of this stuff you’re breathing in. Tell the midwife the problem and see if they can suggest anything.

It’s a very interesting point because they do seem to be the social hub of the village, but they did tell us then when they first moved in that that people absolutely hated them. So I wonder what the story really is there. It’s also quite well-known in the village that the biomass boiler is always broken and causing him issues - apparently it’s had issues for years and years. So perhaps the village wouldn’t blame us for having an issue with it