ᐅ Fireplace: Inside or Outside Placement?

Good evening,

we are currently planning our house and want to install a chimney for a wood-burning stove. Now we are wondering whether it should be inside or outside? There is space available for both options. Can someone tell me the advantages and disadvantages? Which is cheaper, considering that we could install the external chimney ourselves?

Exterior installations are cheaper, everyone knows that. This is the DIY solution from hardware stores.

The same goes for using something like a service connection pillar instead of routing it into the utility room, or choosing manual shutters—or no shutters at all.

If the external appearance doesn’t matter to you:

A brick chimney is usually located in the center of the house, while others are placed on an exterior wall. You need to decide what you prefer.

Height is also a factor. Your chimney must extend ABOVE the highest window of your neighbors within a certain radius in meters. This can be difficult with a side-mounted stainless steel chimney.

With a brick chimney, you can also direct the fresh air intake into the house. With one positioned on the side of the house, you will need to core drill for the fresh air intake.

I’d recommend discussing this with the chimney specialist and the planner regarding the distance to neighboring houses.

An exterior chimney is definitely more affordable. However, you should have the planning done by a company experienced in this—fragg has already mentioned something about the required distance to neighboring windows.
We installed our exterior chimney entirely by ourselves, which was quite manageable with the appropriate tools and equipment. Visually, it’s not exactly a highlight, but you get used to it.

I find an exterior stainless steel chimney visually unappealing. For a retrofit in an existing building, there’s not really any alternative, but for a new build, I would only choose an internal chimney.

Grobmutant schrieb:

I find a stainless steel exterior chimney visually unappealing. For retrofitting in an existing building, there really isn’t much choice, but for a new build, I would only consider an internal chimney.

...our neighbors had an exterior chimney added to their town villa afterward, and it actually looks quite good and fits the house. Fortunately, for us, it’s not on the two sides with timber framing but on the fully plastered extension. Otherwise, it would look even worse.

Of course, it always depends on the style of the house.