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.
