Kitchen extractors - vented or recirculating?

[Richard Savage]

Would like to hear your views/experiences concerning kitchen extractor hoods. I'm planning my replacement kitchen and am debating the pros and cons of extractor hoods that vent through an outside wall compared with those that, by virtue of location on an internal wall must clean and then recirculate the air.

The hood will be located over a 900 mm wide 5 burner gas hob. The current layout includes an extracting hood but I'm conscious of all the (expensive) warm air that will be extracted along with the smell of burning food! I'm also aware that one can run ducting from hoods mounted on internal walls across cupboards to external vents but the 'internal' location of the hob would be on the opposite side of the kitchen from the outside wall. I could run ducting across the ceiling (unsightly) or through the ceiling void of the room above (difficult to clean the duct work).

Any views etc on which hood to buy would also be welcome. BTW I'm 6'2'' and resent banging my forehead on cooker hoods when peering into pots on the hob!

TIA Richard

[Rob Whitton]

Extract don't re-circulate. The air may be warm but it is normally loaded with moisture which the filter won't remove.

Rob

[Andy Hall]

There's really not a lot of point to recirculating hoods. The carbon filters will absorb certain of the smells etc for a short while but do nothing to deal with water vapour.

I would try to find a way to do a ducting arrangement since the results of extraction to the outside are very much better.

One solution that I have seen for ducting is to use a flat, wide type and run it along the top of the kitchen cupboards. You can create a flyover shelf between them and in other areas to continue the line. This also has the advantage that you can run cables and pipes and even locate LV halogen lamps which are very effective next to walls.

In terms of manufacturer, a large proportion of hoods sold, many as branded to appliance manufacturers, are made by Elica.

Elica has a wide range themselves and the UK distributor is DR Cookerhoods.

They sell through dealers and will recommend one. The last hood I bought came from TLC Direct on special order.

Some of the models in the range come with metal mesh washable grease filters. These can be removed and washed in hot water and detergent, so no consumable filters are required. .andy

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[Richard Savage]

Thanks Andy,

I'll contact Elica.

As for ducting - unfortunately there is no 'over cupboard path' across the kitchen (galley kitchen with doors at both ends) Sorry I should have made that clear. At their previous (pre first War) house my father solved a similar problem by ducting the extracted air down the back of the cooker and into the void under the floor. Not an option in my concrete rafted house.

Rgds Richard

[Toby]

You could take the ducting straight across the room, fit a 500mm wide board under it with a couple of LV downlighters in it.

[Andy Hall]

That's awkward.

Are both doors to other internal rooms or is one an end wall? In that case you could go through that.

Otherwise, is it feasible to swap the kitchen around mirror image so that the cooker is on the outside wall? I know it sounds daft for the sake of a cooker and hood, but if the room is also relatively small, it's even more important to try and extract to the outside.

.andy

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[Niall]

Right across the ceiling in 110mm pipe, paint it chrome and call it a "feature"? "The industrial look".

[Harry Bloomfield]

Richard Savage wrote on Tuesday (20/01/2004) :

Very definitely extract to the outside. The filter in a recirculating type may take out some of the grease, but none of the moisture. I ran a rigid plastic pipe up into the ceiling, then used flexible from there about 5 feet along under the floor. I might have been lucky in that the joists ran in the right direction to enable me to do this (check before you decide). Some, perhaps all cooker hoods can be set to recirculate or be ducted out.

I don't think the wasted heat should be considered, it is after all foul moisture laden air which will do your home and its decorations no good at all.

Make sure you get a wall outlet with a flap valve, to prevent air blowing back in. I don't think there would be much likelihood of the pipework ever needing cleaning out, during the working life of cooker hood. The downside is that it is a lot more work putting the pipework in.

[The Natural Philosopher]

That may however be all you need.

IF I had an electric cooker on an internal wall, I'd use one again.

Backed up with a separet extraxctor to remove vapur.

[Richard Savage]

Hi Andy,

Both doors are internal, in walls perpendicular to the outside wall, but not in line with each other. The original plan was an 'L' shape surface along the outside wall containing hob and, across the corner, a 'designer' (Franke) sink some 300 x 430 mm. And a mirror image 'L' on the internal wall opposite containing the double oven in the corner of the 'L'. Having thought more about the sink, we have concluded that it will be too small for things such as grill pans etc. On the basis that we cannot run sink waste across the floor of the kitchen, we are considering relocating the hob to the internal surface and installing a standard size sink somewhere else on the external surface. The advantage of that is co-locating the 'hot' stuff and a useable sink.

I suppose that I could route a duct along the ceiling/internal wall junction through the top of the oven housing and then up into the ceiling void and so to the outside wall or just along the ceiling to the outside wall. I wish one could attach files!

What do you think about cleaning 'in void' ducting?

Cheers Richard

[Andy Hall]

Put photos on a web site and post the URL?

If you choose an extractor with a metal grease filter it will have a reasonable but not perfect effect on keeping down what gets through to the ducting.

Other than that, if you use flexible round duct, it may be simplest and cheapest to simply replace it periodically.

If you use the rigid stuff then you are going to need to find a way to make it demountable with reasonable ease.

.andy

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[Richard Savage]

If you can point me towards a free ISP that will offer some webspace and access via broadband I'd gladly post some pics. I do have access to an ISP offering part of this, but (a) they no longer accept BB access and (b) in any case they seem to have withdrawn the free webspace!

Cheers Richard

[RichardS]

Been following the thread and now I'd be interested to see photos up!

If you mail me some reasonable sized photos tonight and a bit of text to stick with them then I can host 'em for you and post a link. I don't think it'll generate a slashdot-magnitude traffic storm.... :-)

Can't guarantee they'll be there in perpetuity, but should be ok for the forseeable future.

-- Richard Sampson

email me at richard at olifant d-ot co do-t uk

[Brian S Gray]

I would support re use of extracting hoods to remove steam eg when simmering a piece of ham. Note that rectangular ducting comes in at least two sizes and the larger size, preferable for long runs, does not seem to be readily available. Get the .pdf catalogue from Domus with details of their kits etc and formulae for calculating requirements from length and flow rate - the hoods manual will tell you the flow rates required.

[derek]

pages are free and there free tools on there that will upload Yr images for you.

DG

[Richard Savage]

Brill,

Thanks Derek.

Rgds Richard

[Richard Savage]

Thanks to Mine Host, you can find the pics and current layout proposal at:

Now, the first pic is the door in the top of the right-hand internal wall. The second etc move anticlockwise around the kitchen. (Scuse the mess) The, temporary, chipboard surface along the outer wall was installed when we moved in 3 years ago and discovered extensive rot in the existing kitchen units.

TIA to all interested contributors.

Richard

[Richard Savage]

Thanks to Mine Host, you can find the pics and current layout proposal at:

Now, the first pic is the door in the top of the right-hand internal wall. The second etc move anticlockwise around the kitchen. (Scuse the mess) The, temporary, chipboard surface along the outer wall was installed when we moved in 3 years ago and discovered extensive rot in the existing kitchen units.

TIA to all interested contributors.

Richard

[Andy Hall]

Very good, but I'm a bit confused.

The diagram is the new layout, right?

The outside wall is at the bottom of the diagram?

The new hob is in the bottom left of the diagram, i.e. to the left of the arch?

Could you elaborate just a bit because it doesn't seem that the duct would need to cross in that case..... Obvioulsy this is not the case......

.andy

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[Richard Savage]

Sorry Andy,

I guess that in the long, and learned, discussion the original question(s) have been blurred.

The current plan, as shown on the web, has the hob on the outside wall under a hood venting to the outside. In the bottom right hand corner of the plan is a Franke sink whose biggest bowl is some 300 x 400 mm. Diagonally opposite the sink is a double oven 'tower'. This is the only immovable item in the plan because of the need to hide a lot of CH pipes in that corner. Water and gas are placed along the outside wall only.

The design is over two years old now (enforced delay thanks to ICL deciding it didn't require my services when it became Fujitsu) and in that time we have ocasionally thought long and hard about small sinks. The only solution we can think of is to locate the hob next to the ovens and fit a 'proper' sink roughly where the hob is shown on the plan. That raises the problems of providing a gas supply to the oven side of the room (see another thread) and how to deal with smells and steam.

I briefly mentioned a extractor duct across the ceiling tonight and my beloved drew a deep breath and said 'no way'. I'll wait a bit and ask her exactly what she means by that ;-)

Best regards Richard