The next time you decide to show off your Hibachi Chef talents and cook that delicious meal for a small gathering of friends in your kitchen, make sure your kitchen is properly equipped to handle all the smells, steam, and oil splashes from your grand hibachi art-work! 😉
In other words, you’ll want to make sure that your kitchen space is 100% ready for the hard-core cooking, so that when it’s all said and done, your kitchen still looks, feels, and smells great!
That being said, I would like to talk about a proper way to vent a kitchen hood, so that you don’t end up with all sorts of messy stains and unwanted moisture and smells in your lovely kitchen. 😉
It is essential to properly vent your range hood, so that any smoke, fats, vapors, and grease produced whenever you cook, don’t create an unwanted settlement and unsightly stains on the ceiling in your kitchen. 🙁 Trust me, you don’t want to ever let any of that to happen to your kitchen!!!
Range hoods are typically vented using a special duct work that runs through a roof, and less often, through an exterior wall of your house. The duct work is usually concealed within the walls, and it is really important to make everything air and water tight. This way, you won’t have to come back to fix any deficiencies after everything is set and done.
Cooking a delicious meal in your kitchen can be very rewarding, but while the scent of a good meal can be very enticing, it is less pleasant if it sticks around your home for days after the meal has been eaten. I am sure you know exactly what I mean by lingering kitchen smells… 😉
In addition to the smell, cooking can also produce other unpleasant side-effects, such as smoke, grease and moisture. These problems can be avoided by installing a kitchen hood over your cooking range. The hood will draw away the unpleasant smoke, steam and smells from your oven, leaving your kitchen free of bad odors and grime.
How kitchen hoods work
A kitchen hood uses a fan to move the air. These fans may be rotary, centrifugal or axial. A rotary fan is a conventional looking bladed fan.
A centrifugal fan is shaped like a barrel and it is the quietest and most efficient option. An axial fan is a type of bladed fan that has an outer ring. It is quieter than a normal rotary fan, but less expensive than a centrifugal fan.
Axial fans are a good option if you are looking for a hood that is less noisy and more effective than the cheapest rotary fans, but cannot afford to buy a centrifugal fan.
Comparing Range Hoods
Kitchen hoods can be compared to one another in terms of the rate at which they move the air. This is usually measured in terms of the cubic feet of air that are moved per minute. The cubic feet per minute or CFM is a good way of determining how effective a kitchen hood will be at removing smoke and smells.
The higher the CFM of a kitchen hood, the more effective it will be. If you use a gas powered cooktop, you will need a more powerful kitchen hood than if you use an electric cooktop.
Power Considerations
The rate at which the kitchen hood can extract air from the kitchen should be matched to the size of the room. Larger rooms will need more powerful extractor fans in order to prevent bad odors. You can calculate the volume of your kitchen by multiplying its height by its length and width.
You should be able to approximate the volume very easily, even if your kitchen is slightly irregular in shape. Once you know the size of your kitchen, you can work out how powerful the fan needs to be in order to achieve the rate of extraction you need.
You should aim to choose a kitchen hood that is capable of completely replacing or cleaning the air in the kitchen at least eight times every hour, although more powerful fans which can replace the air at least twelve times an hour will be better, if you can afford them.
You can work out how much air a kitchen hood can extract per hour by multiplying its CFM by 60. If you are looking for a kitchen hood that can change the air in your kitchen twelve times an hour then this number should be at least twelve times as great as the volume of your kitchen.
