Very agricultural smell in N.Devon

[Ben Rogers]

Been outside and the smell, jesus christ.

I might be in Devon but it is absolutely awful to smell that.

I don't remember smelling that kind of strength agricultural smell before, ever.

A freind, 5 miles away has the same smell and it's not even windy!

[KidChameleon]

It's just about everywhere between Reading and Wigan. Every year there seems to be a couple of weeks where I think "I don't remember it ever smelling that bad!"

Used to be worst when I lived next to an active hay field where they kept a huge, steaming pile of manure right next to the house for four or five months.

[Tumble]

Someone's probably been using fertiliser derived from human excrement.... there's a farmer around Ormskirk way uses the stuff occasionally, and it's a visceral pong, much more noticeable and violent smelling than traditional muck...

[tiggerai]

Isn't it the french wafting or something - happens every once in a while when the weather is right - or wrong!

[Terbinator]

That's just the smell of the 'countryside;'

[bandsaw]

Someone's probably been using fertiliser derived from human excrement.... there's a farmer around Ormskirk way uses the stuff occasionally

Can they, well, are they actually allowed to do that?!?!?!?

[Tumble]

yeah - when you flush the loo, it all goes into a big tub at the water treatment plant, where the effluent is subjected to progressively finer screens, and some chemical processes, and you get clean water out the other end. The resulting sludge that's left over is full of tonnes of nitrates and other goodies that soil & crops enjoy consuming, so they sell it to the farmers. Probably helps keep the water rates down (a little bit). Problem is, humans are programmed to respond unfavourably to bad human smells, like burning hair/flesh, and waste products like poo and wee, with the result that the sludge they get from the treatment plants smells particularly horrid.

[Ben Rogers]

yeah - when you flush the loo, it all goes into a big tub at the water treatment plant, where the effluent is subjected to progressively finer screens, and some chemical processes, and you get clean water out the other end. The resulting sludge that's left over is full of tonnes of nitrates and other goodies that soil & crops enjoy consuming, so they sell it to the farmers. Probably helps keep the water rates down (a little bit). Problem is, humans are programmed to respond unfavourably to bad human smells, like burning hair/flesh, and waste products like poo and wee, with the result that the sludge they get from the treatment plants smells particularly horrid.

That isn't the case here mate as we don't have mains drainage.

We have a ceptic (sp) tank called a clarigester that we share with next door.

[Tumble]

But it gets emptied every once in a while no? besides - the treatment plants are necessarily out of the way, so it could have come from anywhere....

[0iD]

Absolutely Excrement!

[matty-hodgson]

Get yourself up to Cumbria....

[KidChameleon]

Someone's probably been using fertiliser derived from human excrement.... there's a farmer around Ormskirk way uses the stuff occasionally, and it's a visceral pong, much more noticeable and violent smelling than traditional muck...

I had noticed in some places the smell is more bottom-of-the-shoe than back-of-a-cow.

[Lee H]

Isn't it the french wafting or something - happens every once in a while when the weather is right - or wrong!

More than likely.

If the winds are coming from the east and the 'eurozone' are spreading their muck on their onions and garlic in France and also on their tulips and ganja plants in Holland we seem to get the smell of it wafting across the channel.

[Ben Rogers]

But it gets emptied every once in a while no? besides - the treatment plants are necessarily out of the way, so it could have come from anywhere....

Yeah it gets emptied every year I think..well we've lived here 20 months or so and it has been emptied one time and must be due soon.

The smell was definitely something along the lines of some kind of dodgy fertiliser for sure.

[GheeTsar]

Can they, well, are they actually allowed to do that?!?!?!?

Aye. And further to Tumble's excellent summary, the use of sewage sludge on land is controlled:

If the sludge hasn't had treatment - it can't be used on agricultural land

If the sludge has had standard treatment - it can only be used to grow animal feed crops

If the sludge has had enhanced treatment (99.9999% reduction in pathogens), then it can be used to grow food crops