cooker hoods

[Skipweasel]

By pissing all over it? Yup, I'd think so.

[sm_jamieson]

I never got round to connecting the bathroom extractor. I have a vent in the ceiling presently stuffed with loft insulation in a plastic bag ! Only 2 of us thought, at most two

15 minute showers a day. Room clears of steam quite soon. I have a pane of glass above the door missing though !

Although also a factor is how quickly it takes to replace the lost heat. No fun cooking and eating straight after in the kitchen/diner and its freezing cold !

Simon.

[tim....]

When I moved into this house every flat surface was covered in a thin layer of grease.

God know how that had achieved this especially as they had only been in residence a year.

But as I don't cook anything in oil I am never going to get either problem

tim

[tim....]

Its a point. If you use lids all the time, the room is not filled with steam. Not good if you are trying to reduce a sauce though ! Simon.

------------------------------------------------------------------

So....

When I refurb my kitchen I'm expected to got to the expense/inconvenience of installing a hood just on the off chance that the next owner is a cordon bleu chef?

tim

[djc]

Aluminium is a better conductor of heat, the hot grease laden air needs to cool to extract the grease. The filters will not get hot enough to bake on the grease; caustic soda is not needed, washing soda will work well enough.

[Tim Streater]

If it's a proper one, it's plumbed so that smells etc are vented to the outside. If not, then it's a shitty abomination that will contain a charcoal filter that *attempts* to do the same thing. That will need cleaning from time to time.

[Skipweasel]

Ours had a charcoal filter, but the option to remove it and do the job properly. It wasn't long before I scrounged a core drill and did it properly.

[Dave Liquorice]

More importantly the warm/hot moist air is vented outside. The cooker hood here, when we moved in, was a recirculating type and condensation on the kitchen windows was a problem, even with lids on, pasta and it was time to put your swim suit on. B-) There was already a handy hole in the wall for a larger extract fan but that wasn't working or was missing. One DIY adapter from hood outlet to length of flexable vent hose and antibackdraft outlet later and the condensation problem is 99% eliminated.

I agree recirculating cooker hoods are a waste of space. However charcoal filters are not grease filters or cleanable. They are odour filters and lose effectiveness after "a while" and have to be replaced.

[tim....]

This is (sort of) how I thought it was. So I still don't see why they have become such a necessary part of kitchen fitments.

I can get this idea in a large family house where you will reasonably expect a lot of cooking to be going on, but I choose to live in small(ish) town centre apartments of the type which often (only) come with space for a single under worktop fridge and no provision for a dishwasher.

When I complain about how silly (in this modern era) this is, my sister says that "I don't get it" and that these apartments are designed for the sort of person who 6 days out of 7 picks up the phone and orders a take away to be delivered (and on the seventh day concocts a meal using the toaster and microwave), and yet these places still have an expensive, stylish (unvented) cooker hood installed. She is right, I don't get it!

tim