Cooker hood thoughts

[Anna Kettle]

My ensuite and loo are finished at last and my thoughts are turning to kitchens, spurred on by the £95 ex display kitchen I bought from MFI

There seem to be three types of cooker hood

- Pad to catch the grease. Yuk

- Extract to outside. Sounds much better. c£150

- Automatic extract to outside. c£900

I would like an automatic one, which senses something (heat, moisture, movement ???) and turns itself on and off accordingly, but £700 is far too much to pay for a couple of sensors

How difficult would it be to buy a manual extract cooker hood and retrofit it with the sensors? I have no experience at all of electronics so dont know if I am asking for the moon or not

Also ...

Does anyone have comments on what design (shape, colour) of unit is good. The thin flat bar ones look to me like they are designed to take the eye out but maybe I am worrying unnecessarily. I am not a fan of daily polishing so maybe not stainless steel - I want something which will look good (not perfect) if it gets just an occasional wipe down

Anna

[The Medway Handyman]

Dunno, I'm a numpty about electronics too. IKEA do some very good & very cheap cooker hoods, worth a look.

The trick to keeping stainless steel looking good is to wipe it with Johnsons baby oil. Odd but true, works a treat.

[Tim Lamb]

In message , Anna Kettle writes

Speaking from the customer end of the job.....:-) and assuming your hob is backed by an outside wall...

We have a cheap extractor/filter which is switched on by extending the cover (a door to match the wall cupboards). After 13 years use the only complaint is the amount of tacky grease it has collected.

Depending on the number of pots simmering and time of year you may want to change the fan speed. I guess this is always going to be manual. Leaving the thing set to high speed is not an option because of the noise.

Part of this years christmas present may be to steam clean it and renew the filter.

regards

[Dave Plowman (News)]

I'm not sure it's worth it - despite being a fan (tee-hee) of automation. I run mine all the time I'm cooking to prevent steam etc. The heat from the hob counteracts any heat loss if you set the fan speed correctly. And I usually have to switch the light on and off anyway.

I'd avoid a recirculation type - the filters will be expensive over time. So if you can duct it outside that's the way to go. I get generic filters from the sheds and cut those to fit as needed.

[stuart noble]

I heard the catering trade use tomato ketchup. I suppose the acid stops scale building up

[Roger Mills]

We're currently in the market for a new kitchen, and have looked at lots of kitchen show-rooms - including at cooker hoods.

Virtually all of the hoods with a horizontal intake would do me a serious injury if I bent over to look in a saucepan and then straightened up before moving back out of the range of the hood (I'm 6'2"). Many if them have very sharp edges!

We currently favour the sort with a sloping intake - low at the back and high at the front since the risk of injury is greatly reduced, and they (are claimed to) work just as well.

I don't recall seeing any automatic ones, and expect to have to turn ours on and off - and select the fan speed - manually. One piece of advice we've received from one kitchen designer is to turn the fan on and establish an air flow *before* starting to cook. He says that if you wait until you realise that you needed it on, it's too late - and the fat from frying is already distributed all round the kitchen.

[Michael Chare]

Our cooker hood starts when the hob is switched on and stops a couple of minutes after the hob is switched off. The hood extracts the air and pushes it outside..

This is achieved using a current relay (which detects when the hob draws current) and a delay off relay, which keeps the fan on when the hob cycles its 'plates', and when the hob is switched off.

Neither the hob nor the hood were modified.

I got the parts from Radio Spares:

300-5979 1 £26.37 £26.37 Relay, time delay, multivoltage, M1ESW, 298-9668 1 £52.88 £52.88 Relay, current control, 1-20A, multi vol

And fitted them into:

251-5037 1 £4.04 £4.04 Enclosure, electrical junction box, steel

Done 5 years ago and so far trouble free!

[fictitiousemail]

No need to say "yuk" . It doesn't work like that . If it did then you'd need to be seriously worried about what was happening on the hob.