Cooker Hood installation

asp746

i had an electrician do some work round the house. I'm very pleasedwith his work and he has even plastered after all his channelling:T .

Anyway, I told him i wanted a cookerhood installed - nothing fancy, just one for about £200. He talked to me about it and said the outlt duct would go through the kitchen ceiling, along to the right and a grill would be put on the outside wall.

He's emailed me today and said and I quote

fit extractor hood , this will have to have a filter , after further thinking to run through the floor boards would be not practical. you can buy hoods with filters which dont need a outlet ducting. £45 .

I assume this will be one that will only catch grease or can you get condenser type ones like with tumble driers?? I have a galley type kichen and the cooker is bang in the middle of the long wall - i have to have the backdoor open when i cook to allow steam and smells to expell so i'm desperate for a cooker hood.

Why do you think he said it won't be practical - there is plenty of wall for him to be able to fit the thing to the external wall? The one he's suggested is one of those small platform type ones and won't be worth having. Do you think he just doen't want to do the job?? I've got my heart set on having a nice cookerhood.

thanks

SmartRRRR

asp746, I agree with your last comment - I expect he doesn't want to do it.

There are no condenser type hoods. Most will work in extract or recirculate modes - the recirc does as you suggest and only acts as a grease catcher.

As he has done work in your house he will know the layout of the floorboards and if they do go the 'wrong' way it might be difficult or impossible to get the ducting to go where you want.

We have an extractor in our utility 600mm from the outside wall but the ducting goes over 5 metres in the opposite direction because it cannot go through the 2 joists and past the heating pipes that are in the way.

kwatt

Hi asp,

RRRR is perfectly correct. On recirc mode hoods are merely grease catchers and normally they ain't so good in that mode. They don't condense at all, total rubbish.

There's a technical phrase we use for it that ends in "useless".

Here's and article you may find of use that I wrote on this a while ago that I hope explains it all for you.

My advice though, if your steam problem is that bad, is to look very carefully at what you're buying as hoods are far from all equal. Look very carefully at the extraction rates.

HTH

K.

majjie

That's a great article by kwatt.

It's perfectly true that many kitchen fitters don't pay any attention to the size of vent ducting required. They tend to buy the same stuff from the same supplier - regardless of what the hood specifies. If you buy the hood yourself it's best to buy the venting at the same time - then you can be (fairly) certain it's right.

Getting back to the question, though, I'd be a little less harsh on re-circulating cooker hoods. They're not too bad at removing smells, as long as you change the charcoal filter when necessary ... fairly frequently, if you do a lot of smelly cooking (anyone for fried fish and boiled cabbage?).

They are bad at removing steam though; and avoid the ones with paper grease filters ... the better quality ones have metal grease filters which you can just pop in the dishwasher (or scrub in a bowl of hot soapy water).