To have only just noticed the death of the chimney!

@PlanningTowns I don't envy your role, but I don't believe adding fake chimneys is the answer.

I never even thought about this before, and had to check our house immediately, and bugger me, we don’t have a chimney! Have lived here for 4 years now and never noticed. House was built in the early 80’s, so not exactly a new build, but I guess they were already seen as redundant by then!

It can’t come soon enough. The air round here is full of smoke in the winter. It plays havoc with my lungs.

Our house is 60's, has two chimneys, one for the original gas boiler, and one for the fireplace - I don't know if you could choose to have an open fire there, as this house had a gas fire - and a fancier fireplace (and bathroom) as it was the show home for the estate.

A lot of people have had a new roof over the last 15 years, and quite a few have had one or both chimneys removed.

So my question to you is, how do you integrate 100-200 plus new homes into an existing village where every existing property has a chimney - where there is a richness that has evolved over time and where it would have been absolutely extraordinary to have seen developments of more than 5 houses at any one time. Oh, and where you have the added constraint of at least one if not more conservation areas and other designations

Most developers in our area want to build traditional styled housing, they aren’t interested in contemporary (apparently it doesn’t sell) and getting them to do anything sustainable above building regulations is like you have asked them to sacrifice a small child. And this is in one of the most affluent areas of the country.

my personal preference is for contemporary modern homes which are highly sustainable, have evolved to take account of contemporary architectural practices and add a new dimension to the built environment. It probably wouldn’t have a chimney as it would be built to passive Haus standards.

The typical house developers use pocket books with standard floor plans, and as little elevational treatment beyond a door and four windows as possible. There is no creativity, no contribution to the community and even less regard for the context within which they wish to build. Try working with that and you would soon realise why people don’t want to go into the profession.

there are so many reasons why the planning system is in a mess (not least how housing numbers are determined and the use of the tilted balance to get whatever shit development is put forward at appeal). I wouldn’t have put me looking to ensure crap schemes integrate into their surroundings just a little bit better to be at the top of that list but I live and learn.

i imagine you live in quite a unique place where new development is as it should be, evolved, contemporary and sustainable. Probably some city and not in the shires where any positive change is resisted at every single level.

We have hundreds of new houses going up behind us and they have fake chimney’s! It’s so weird, they just create a small stack on the roof with a couple of chimney pots and that’s it. Why bother?

I saw a chimney sweep van today! So we must have sufficient chimneys in our bit of SE London to support one business at least.

Chim chimeney...!

I only ask because I'm reading Sarah Beeny's book and she's very interesting on the subject of air tight houses. She says that heat pumps and other systems that are designed for air tight houses only work economically, efficiently and effectively if windows are never opened. Seems strange when most people like to open windows.

What does Father Christmas do?🎅

I will always have a house with a working chimney. I love wood burners in winter.

I agree it looks very strange to see hundreds of roofs with no chimneys. There are far too many new builds near me, not one has a chimney.
The houses built in the 60s, 70s and 80s all have working chimneys.

Has nobody mentioned Father Christmas yet? How will he deliver the prezzies? 🎁 Will a future generation reading the Three Little Pigs not understand how the wolf tried to get in? 🐷 🐷 🐷 🐺

Mind you, they haven’t yet found an alternative to the toilet pipe vent. That still sticks up like a chimney.

Do you open the windows?

There must be thousands of acres of 1960s and 70s estates in the UK without a single chimney (real or otherwise) to be seen.

So they’re like male nipples or appendixes — sort of evolutionary leftovers.

Old house here with chimney and open fire. My builder FIL always said a house needed a chimney to 'breathe', peesum he meant air circulation.
Although we have a cage on our pots to stop birds nesting in them.

Yes I cant bear it. I see it all the time and say to myself 'no chimney!'

I would never buy a house with no chimney and I dont like views of houses without them either

We have a wood burner and I would want that in any other house I buy too

Good grief!

No wonder our planning system is on n a mess if this is the standard of thought among our planners

It's not "good design" to put an obligatory non-functional, ornamental, pastiche feature on the roof of a contemporary home. How on earth is it "better quality" to include a redundant artefact on a building? Absolute nonsense argument!

Do you insist all the chimneys have a TV aerial installed as well to replicate that historic late 20th century roofscape?

We live in a new build and we have a pretend chimney!! Its on the roof but no fireplace or actual chimney flue or anything!

A new build estate near me had fake chimneys on some of the houses. Clearly they caused leaks, because you could watch the scaffolding go up and the roof be repaired around the chimney through the estate virtually in the order the houses were built.