Kitchen Range Exhaust
I need to add a hood to my kitchen and it’s very hard to vent to the outside. Does anyone know about ductless range hoods?
I need to add a hood to my kitchen and it’s very hard to vent to the outside. Does anyone know about ductless range hoods?
When we did our kitchen, we wanted a gas range in an island about 12 feet from the outside wall. Since we had a 9-foot ceiling in the kitchen, my contractor dropped the ceiling about 10-11 inches and ran a 8-inch duct from the range hood directly outside. The small drop was very helpful for the electrician to run wiring for the hood and to install ceiling spots.
recirculating is better than nothing, just do not expect much.
while ducting to the outside is preferable, a high quality ductless filter is far from ‘useless’. By high quality I do _not_ mean one that incorporates a microwave.
There are vents that incorporate both charcoal and grease filters and they work well. I installed one in my last apt kitchen reno and they were a big improvement.
I don’t think a recirculating hood is totally useless. I have one, because my kitchen has no external wall. (im in a high rise) It does have a fairly powerful building vent, though. My recirculating hood is right under that vent, so the combination of the hood’s grease-trapping abilities and the building vent’s smoke clearing works reasonably well. Not as well as an externally vented hood, but certainly much better than the vent alone. For the way I cook- a lot of sautéing and deglazing, fairly messy – it’s well worth it.
if your range is near a window, get one of those window fan units where you can set it suck air in (ie to cool) or air out (ie to vent cooking odor)
I totally agree…. it needs to vent to the outside or you might as well just not have a hood.
Not useless, but not great. However, if it’s hard to vent to the outside, it looks as though that’s what the OP will need. That’s what I have, and I’m (in Rehab’s words) an “avid cook.” Sure, occasionally I’ll get smoke all through the house, and once or twice (when I’ve forgotten something) the smoke detectors gone off, but the ductless vent helps, as does the windows and the door! Ventilation is important, but if the OP has good windows, they’ll help.
ductless vents are useless.
I know as an avid cook that it is HIGHLY preferable to vent to the outside, if there is any way you can make that happen. Recirculating hoods are slightly useful for sucking up greasy vapors and trapping some of that oil in cleanable filters. But you’ll never be able to pan fry a steak without setting off the fire alarm, your whole house will smell like roast chicken or fish every time you cook those foods, etc. Ventilation is soooo important.