Fireplace, inside or outside?

Good evening,

we are currently planning our house and want a chimney for a wood-burning stove! Now the question arises, internal or external? There would be space for both options! Can someone name advantages and disadvantages? Which is cheaper, with the background that we could install the external chimney ourselves!

Outside is cheaper, everyone knows that. That's the DIY hardware store solution.

Same as street connection pillar instead of relocating it to the utility room or manual roller shutters. Or no roller shutters at all.

If you don't care about the external appearance:

A masonry chimney is just in the center of the house, the other one on an exterior wall. You have to know what you want.

Then there's the height. You have to end UP above the highest window of your neighbors within x meters radius. That can be difficult with a lateral stainless steel chimney.

With a masonry one, you can also lead the fresh air into the house right away. With one on the house side, you make a core drill hole for the fresh air.

I’d talk to the chimney sweep and the planner about the distance to other houses.

An external chimney is clearly cheaper. However, you should have the planning done by a company that knows about it – regarding the distance to the neighboring windows, fragg has already written something. We did the installation of our external chimney completely ourselves, it was very doable with the appropriate tools and equipment. Visually, such a thing is not exactly a highlight, but you get used to it.

I find a stainless steel exterior chimney visually very unattractive. When retrofitting in existing buildings, there is no real alternative, but for new construction, I would only opt for an internal one.

I find a stainless steel exterior chimney very unattractive. In the case of a retrofit in an existing building, there is really no other way, but for a new build I would only go for an internal one.

...our neighbors had an exterior chimney added to their city villa afterwards, which even looks quite good and fits the house. Fortunately, ours is not on the two sides with half-timbering, but on the completely plastered extension. Otherwise, it would look even worse.

Sure, it always depends on the style of the house.