Sewage!!

[whendidimakethisbottle]

Literally was almost at the point of reserving a beautiful little new build house out in a semi rural area. It's perfect size for us just now with excellent school options.
Just noticed from the development plan that it's across the road from a small water treatment plant!
Been advised by parents that this could be smelly and also put off prospective buyers in the future - especially important to us as this will only be big enough for us for a few years and we plan to move to a bigger place once DP has moved up in his career
What would you do? So heartbroken as thought it was perfect

modern ones are supposed to be odour free, but I find that's not really true.

The nearest one to me usually has maintenance work done during the night when people will be indoors and perhaps asleep so not notice it.

But round here we also get muck-spreading which is worse.

I work in this part of the water industry. There will be smells, how bad will depend on a lot of factors, no site is odour free.

The works will be visited regularly during the week, plus if a piece of eqiupment fails, there will be site attentence any time of the day and night 365 days a year, including Christmas day.

Also the site will have a tanker there at regular intervals to removel sludge, number of visits will depend on size of works. Plus if the site fails majorly, then the flows into tge site will be tankered 24/7 until the issue is resolved.

@PigletJohn thanks very much for your reply. It's a good point, and something that I hadn't considered, that muck spreading smells would overpower any smell from the sewage works. We certainly got a good whiff of the fields when we viewed the plot! Maybe the smell of the treatment works won't really be an issue for us after all

@Bibble69 thanks very much for your reply. Do you think I should be concerned about large vehicle traffic to and from the works then? Could you possibly tell from the photo if it's quite a small plant there?

Hi, From the photo, I would class it as a small medium sized works. The oval in the middle is an oxidation ditch, which is the treatment plant. These generally produce less odours than other types of plant, but if the process fails then a lot of tankering is required. There is a roadway all around the site which suggests to me that they have articulated tankers in there rather than smaller rigid tankers. The two round tanks are settlement tanks, which are a clean up process before the clean effluent goes to the local watercourse.

It maybe worth a call to the water company, the number and site name should be on the gate, and ask about vehicle movements to the site and the nunber of visits it receives. Don't ask the developers as they will tell you it's visited once in a blue moon. I had a site where the developers said that to a purchaser, we told them it was visited daily and had 4 tanker movements a week!! Also ask if it has a tanker curfew, some sites only allow tankers between 8am-4pm execpt for emergencies, for example.

Also if there is a major piece of equipment failure, there will also be cranes brought onto site to remove the broken piece.

Hope this helps

@Bibble69 can't thank you enough for taking the time to reply. The information you've provided is extremely helpful!

The working of the treatment works is also dependant on the local population not putting stuff down the drains that cause blockages or kills the beneficial bacteria in the filter beds (circular things in the picture) that are needed in the breakdown of the waste.
(I've also worked in the industry- many moons ago).

@MrsMoastyToasty that's such a good point! I'd like to hope that, because it's a rural area and next to a works, people there would be more mindful of this however don't think most people can be trusted not to be idiots and so should really expect frequent break downs in operation