The majority of the heat from ovens is not created by the little air that is trapped around the oven box. The heat you feel is comming from the front of the unit so it can cool the cavity in some cases but more importantly the electronic board(s). Best to have your HVAC system designed so that zones can be used and make the kitchen it's own zone with it's own thermostat. That way dmaers can close elsewher when not needed. A heating ventilation recovery system may also be incorperated to exhaust stale air and condition incoming fresh.

Note: these are not for the budget minded, or the average HVAC "guy". They can be tempermental, and difficult to design properly.

Oh, this might be gauche, but I wonder if a quiet bathroom fan in the ceiling above the wall ovens would help?

In our first kitchen remodel 20 years ago we had a GE Profile double wall oven. That was the good old days when you broiled with the door ajar. Our cabinets were made to accomodate a Broan exhaust vent that was installed over the double oven and beneath the upper cabinets. It's the type that automatically comes on when you lift up the metal vent cover and was exhausted through duct work in our soffit to the outside. It worked well on burnt garlic bread or to reduce the smell of fish.

When we remodeled 2 years ago we kept the exhaust fan even though the GE was replaced with a Dacor with the electronic control panels that requires closed door broiling. Our thought was we could still utilize the exhaust in the event something burned or to vent excess heat when both ovens were being used.

We have used it occasionally when something has burned. But the Dacor's are so much better insulated than our old GE that we haven't bothered using it to exhaust extra heat. However I don't see any reason why you couldn't do something similar. Ours is very unobtrusive, it's completely built in and flush with the front of the cabinet.

Alas, I don't thing Broan or Nutone make the oven exhaust vents any longer. A while back I wanted to replace one that had failed in one of my rental properties. I couldn't find them and was told they're no longer made. Fortunately, I finally found one still in stock at a place down in San Francisco that said it had been sitting in thier warehouse for years.

That being said, I think an ordinary exhaust fan in the kitchen makes good sense. There's bound to be a way to install one unobtrusively. Fantech makes a bathroom exhaust system that is absolutely silent in operation. I've used that system in my bathrooms for years. It would be perfect in a kitchen, too. It utilizes a small vent opening in the ceiling and an in-line fan up in the attic. They work very effectively and are absolutely silent. I have all of mine on timers because I'd forget to turn them off otherwise. You can't hear them running.

They're available in a variety of sizes and configurations; single or dual vent ports, with lighting or without.

Here is a link that might be useful: Fantech In-line Exhaust Systems

While a clever and inexpensive idea, the real reason the architect laughed is physics. That littel fan you want is not going to move enough air fast enough to keep the kitchen cool. They work in bathroom settting because, rooms are smaller and you are trying to remove moisture. The source of the moisture stops and the fans continue until moisture is gone. Well that's the theory. Operator error accounts for less than optimal results.

Your oven is going to produce way more heat faster and longer than the bath fan can exhaust. You also should account for the xtra people and their body heat when present. What's going to replace that air?????? The only way to achieve comfort is to properly design the HVAC system like I said . You need to cool that hot air in that room more than elsewhere in the house during times of use. Remember the cooling need will not be constant - hence my rec. for a seperate thermostat for that area.

I appreciate the feedback. And I agree that more HVAC capacity in the kitchen is a big part of the answer. However I know there is an opportunity here for some more green ideas then just using more power for a larger AC system. A small bathroom vent would have the capacity to remove the heat - if it were able to capture the heat at the source. That way it would be removing lets say... 150 degree air from just around the oven and near the oven vent. This may require design changes in the oven itself. I know my old GE double oven would have benefited from a vent inside the cabinet. There was a small crack all the way around it and the air moving into that crack would have taken a lot of heat with it. You wouldn't need much make-up air since its only pulling a moderate amount of very hot air. I would need to do the BTU math to see if its worthwhile. Most likely newer ovens wouldn't the same payoff.

donellyjt -- You are right on in your thoughts. In fact, I will be installing a double oven vented to the exterior of the house later today. I don't know why this is not a standard practice as it not only vents the hot air, but also the products of combustion (gas) -- and no, it's not all "water vapor" as some will tell you. NOX is a suspect in some lung "injuries" -- not to scare onyone. In today's tight houses, it makes sense to exhause this stuff. And you are right about getting the VERY hot air out. It's certainly cheaper for your AC to heat 90 degree make up air that it is to cool that much hotter air coming from the wall oven. In this instance, this is a new installation and the vent will run from the inside of the cabinet space to the exterior of the house (not directly though as the double oven is in an inside wall wall. The time to do it is when you are installing a new oven. And yes, even a "small" vent fan is enough to pull that small amount of air out of the cabinet. (A 20,000 btu burner running 25% of the time put out as much heat as 50 people in a room!) Do it -- you will appreciate the difference.

architect simply hadn't seen it before . . .

I suspect a modest 150 cfm fan would suffice for a well-insulated wall oven. With a stove, a lot of what you're removing is cooking odors, not just the extra heat. 150 cfm is a good amount of air--that's removing the equivalent of a 4'x5' block lock of air with standard 8' ceilings once per minute.

Newer wall ovens do hold the heat better and dissipate it more slowly after cooking than some of the older ones, so it may not be as obvious an improvement with your new ovens as it would be to do it with your old ones, but that doesn't mean it's not worth doing.

My older (1929) house had a vent (OK, a hole with a fan in it) near the range which was against an exterior wall, and that was it for ventilation. Sort of like a bathroom fan, really. A very old-school bathroom fan. Anyway, I'm just saying it's been done! You are not alone! And it got very cold in those MI winters....but you'll be getting a new one, so no worries. :)

May I just add something to this? Our 5 yr old Dacor ovens do vent hot air from the front, yes. But it honestly is not that much, nor is it a problem. I don't even notice except when I run the self-clean cycle and that's mainly because of the smell, not excessive heat. Modern ovens are well insulated, broiling is done with the door closed, and the problem that the OP worries about simply isn't there, not to the extent it might be with older or cheaper appliances.

FG - right as usual, but OP said during parties which means that other heating apps are probably being used as well a body heat from guests who are most likely in or near the kitchen. At that point the oven heat will be noticable because someone is prob. standing by it. I still think I'm right that a bath fan is going to make no noticable difference in this situation, and may cause other issues, but will certainly eat crow if I'm wrong.

antss, I really appreciate your expertise. I just wanted to contribute in a "thinking out loud" manner. Some of this 'common sense' is based on day to day experience. I've worked in a room that got terribly hot,... till I opened a stairway door, allowing a natural draft for the hot air... A friend of mine just moved in the same building to another apartment that had an extra corner room with windows and remarked how much cooler it was with the extra ventilation. The idea being to create a natural chimney effect.

I assumed the heat would accumulate from people checking on the food, opening and closing the oven door, and just the mass of humanity that can warm up any room. Even in a little coffee house concert space it can get warm very fast unless you can open some doors and get a draft going.
Since warm air rises, blowing it out (and some of those panasonic ceiling fans blow 400+ cfm, I thought it would help to get rid of the stale warm air that accumulates at the ceiling, and the make-up air(very important), I assumed would just come from an open kitchen plan, since most newer kitchens are not sealed off. Maybe they could have floor vents and bring the air up from under the house. I'm not designing anything, just offering a suggestion.

Finally, I studied passive energy systems in college, and alternative energy. Decades ago, I lived in a windmill powered house with passive solar heat collectors. Much later I learned the benefit of "swamp coolers" in the SouthWest. I'm certainly no expert, just neighborly. And I don't mind it if you say I'm full of hot air.

alex _ I agree some alternative energy systems are very good. What works in the arid south west stinks in humid S.Carolina, Ga, and Fl. When I lived in Germany in the 80's on a working estate the entire place, 12000 SF manor house divided to 5-6 apartments, our modest 5 bedroom 4 bath deal, a care takers bungalow, the principal farmers house, an aunt's place and the stables all had hot water for the day provide by 2 round bales of hay. This was for heat, domestic h2o, and driveway de icing. Great if 1. you can aford the expensive equipment, 2. have a ready never ending supply of hay. No good in downtown Boston, but from a green and low cost operational standpoint it is a goldmine.

Why not skip the "xtra" fan and use your hood fan instead???? It'll exhaust air too, no complicated setup. Or simply pull out a $12 Kmart box fan to blow on folks for that draft that makes everyone more comfortable.

I think common sense is sorta thrown out the window w/most kitchens anyway. Does the OP or anyone else really NEED a double convection oven that can warm a room??? Nope, the 350 buck entry level Roper will cook a ham just as well if you have talent in the first place. Ditto with A/C in general, don't need it, like it. Could save a lot of trees if 50% of folks got rid of their A/C units.

What about one of those portable AC units, that can run inside the room? I haven't used one, so can't verify how well they work. Just throwing that idea out here. Not sure how green either. I saw one at HD, I think for around $200

Why not skip the "xtra" fan and use your hood fan instead???? It'll exhaust air too, no complicated setup. Or simply pull out a $12 Kmart box fan to blow on folks for that draft that makes everyone more comfortable.

Exactly what I had thought too - why not just use the hood to exhaust the air - it is probably a higher cfm animal than a bathroom fan any how. Didn't think of the box or window fan although I will say that having put in a few of those in the my house in a push-pull configuration, they do a really good job.

I think common sense is sorta thrown out the window w/most kitchens anyway. Does the OP or anyone else really NEED a double convection oven that can warm a room??? Nope, the 350 buck entry level Roper will cook a ham just as well if you have talent in the first place.
*grin* Good to see this point. I've also wondered just how much the 2/3/6 ovens per kitchen is really a matter of need versus "can have". Although I'll freely admit that I have neither the kitchen lust nor talent than many who frequent the gardenweb do.

alex, Regardless how serious antss is or was, the rangehood can be a very effective approach for venting the oven residuals. However, for it to work, the kitchen does need to be designed to support that. Back when I was designing my kitchen, someone had asked this question about how people handle venting (residual heat, smells) the oven smells if the oven and cooktop are not colocated. Well, since that was the configuration I had, I paid close attention. I situated my oven across the aisle from the cooktop (and venthood) and the configuration is good enough that the negative pressure generated at the hood can vent the smells from the oven so as not to pervade the rest of the house. There is a noticeable difference when I use the hood (with the oven) or not - less smells one way than the other. The oven doesn't put out enough heat to significantly motivate using the hood by itself, but I'm sure it is helped when I do use it. This configuration won't and can't work if hood and oven aren't designed for venting the oven and just incidentally located.