City villa floor plan 155 sqm - your opinion is requested

At least if I’m building the house in North America -

But it doesn’t say that there.

I would definitely install a chimney, even if I don’t need it for heating.

Yes, and a kids’ bathroom, even if you don’t have children, a huge storage room even without growing vegetables, and definitely a double garage, even if you don’t have a driver’s license. But definitely!

Everyone can do as they please.

Luckily – I don’t wonder about the added value of _my_ answers ;)

Those were also the super smart ones who once thought, why do I need a chimney. [...] Others, on the other hand, retrofitted it in the house with ceiling penetrations, roof penetrations, etc. All very expensive afterwards.

That's why I said:

Planning a chimney as a placeholder with dashed lines - I can accept as an "expect the unexpected" mindset.

Within this dashed line zone, you then leave out the underfloor heating coils and whatever other pre-installations you want to do. But actually, I was here again in this thread because of my question in post #24 to .

Sorry. Forgot that you are not allowed to make jokes in this forum. I’ll be quiet now.

It’s not about your joke, but about the seriousness of always having to include something, even though "one" doesn’t need it.

I have certainly seen a lot of houses in the stock, also in various new development areas where these stainless steel [Außenschornsteine] have been retrofitted. Usually forced somehow through the roof structure because it could only be realized inside the house with great effort or not at all.

Today, there are ready-made chimney elements available at affordable prices as kits, and if considered during the construction planning, it doesn't cost the world. However, the later benefit can be enormous.

The chimney has been one of the central and most important components in a house for ages. Why should it be different today?

I don't want to know how many people the heat pump can't handle in the cold winter, and they wish for a fireplace stove.

I know, here in the forum, that will never happen. So just save yourself the chimney; I have two in my house anyway.

If, for whatever reason, the heat pump in the new building with a 5kW heating load at NAT -15 degrees breaks down, you just put a 2kW fan heater in the living room as a temporary solution and bake a cake or a pizza in the oven… ;)

A chimney without all the rest unfortunately doesn’t help to bridge the time until the repair either :D

(...) I don't want to know how many times the heat pump fails in the cold winter and people wish for a wood stove. (...)

I can imagine that this doesn't fit your worldview and that's why you don't want to know it at all. It probably happens quite rarely.