Does a fireplace need to go directly under the chimney?

Lbuk

I’m buying a house and the rooms have been enlarged in a way that has resulted in the fireplaces being off centre. 

The chimney breasts are visible on the inside of the room.

I’m wondering if I could put the fireplace more centrally to the room and to the side of the chimney breast.

Hopefully some clever panelling will then visually centre the chimney breast.

Any reason why this wouldn’t work?

tacpot12

While paneling can hide the actual line of the chimney breasts, the limits on what you can do will be determined by the angle that you need the flue to follow. Altering the route of the flue isn't something you should attempt yourself unless you have some experiernce. If the firesplaces are not to be used and there is to be no connection between the fireplace and the flue, then you will have greater freedom to move them.  

maisie_cat

Our fireplace isn't centred in our living room. I noticed it initially but not now if that helps.

stuart45

Is the fireplace going to be used for anything?

Belenus

As stuart45 asks above, we need to know if the fireplace will be functional or decorative only.

I can tell you what we did about 20 years ago in our previous house. The living room was about 19 ft x 12ft, 19ft being the full width of the rear of the house. There was a fully functioning fireplace with flue and a gas fire centred on a shorter wall. The wall there was flat with no protruding chimney breast. The 'chimney breast' was outside the house. The gas fire was one of those made to look like a real fire in a black cast iron basket with fake coals. It vented up the chimney.

We later extended the room to about 19ft x 19ft by removing most of the rear wall and extending into the garden. About 12 inches of the original rear wall of the house was left on each side to act as piers to support a pair of RSJs that now supported the house above..

This meant that the fireplace was no longer central but the pier somewhat reduced the oddness of that.

Years later we decided to remodel the room. We reversed the layout by 180 degrees. We built a dummy wooden chimney breast on the wall opposite the original fireplace, using the pier on that side and sized so that it was now centred along the 19 ft wall.

We fitted a limestone fireplace and mantelpiece with a gas fire with a powered flue through the wall to the outside.

We placed a large cabinet in front of the old fireplace hole to hide it.

This picture gives some idea of the new layout although the dummy chimney breast does not show up too well. It is about 12 inches deep.

Slinky

maisie_cat said:

Our fireplace isn't centred in our living room. I noticed it initially but not now if that helps.

You would if it was like ours was! We've removed it and bricked it up.