Did you ever feel you needed more ventilation? If not I'd sure be tempted to paint the old one in situ.

You need to find out if it's ducted--you'd probably need to hire someone if it isn't and you want to add it. What is above it? Cabinets? What's inside? Can you get in the attic? Cook something really smelly, turn the hood on high, wander around outside sniffing? When you pull off the screens on the vent, are there charcoal pads or anything like that?

1. the hood vent pipe should go straight up through the cabinetry, not zigzag through the wall. If you can help it. You can get ducts that are 3.5"x10" that will fit inside a wall (like a standard AC vent), but since this is a retrofit it would mean tearing out the wall on one side to install it.

2.Shorter is better, but a 90* turn adds an effective 15' or so. How can you 'turn it behind the stove' if the stove is on an interior wall with a room behind it? Do you mean going up through the cabinet above, turn right above the cabinet and then to the exterior wall?

3. If the hood is less than 400cfm, don't worry about MUA.

Concerning more ventilation: Most of the time it's fine. I don't mind cooking smells in the house. I've never cooked fish or something with strong unpleasant odors. The only times I really want more is when I'm sauteeing onions or searing steaks and I get smoke going. I turn it on in those cases but it doesn't even have enough pull to really pull the smoke up to the vent if that makes sense. Also I have greasy build-up on top of my cabinets. I had no idea that a fan was even suppose to be used for greasy things (can you tell my mom never used hers either), so now that I know a fan could help with that it would be nice if I had one that worked better so I didn't have to scrub the top of my cabinets every year.

As far as current venting goes; if I had any it would have to be in the existing wall, nothing goes through the cabinet over the stove. Also there is nothing on the roof or side of the house that indicts anything being vented anywhere in this area of the house.

Weedmeister, after reading your message I realize I was incorrect in my thinking of where the duct connects to the hood. I was thinking they would connect to the back side of the hood (where it touches the wall) but after reading this I think you are saying the duct will connect above the hood. Is that correct? In that case I'd have 2 turns in either direction (one from the fan to the wall and one from the wall to go up or to the side. I'd definitely want the vent in the wall because I have a huge open space above the cabinets up to the cathedral ceiling and I wouldn't want to see a vent running there.

Thanks for helping me clarify this stuff. More and more it sounds like going ductless might still be my best choice. The filters on them were rather expensive and I was starting to think maybe over the long term that just installing the ducting work would be cheaper than replacing all those filters.

So if I'm going to install a ductless hood, does the CFM's matter so much.

I was considering the Broan Evolutions QP130 or Broan QP230 hoods.

I think what you have now is a ductless (recirculating) hood. Are you content to keep washing the cabinets?

Usually you purchase the hood based on how you want it to exhaust. If it is to be located on an outside wall, you get one that exhausts out the back. If you aren't, then one that exhausts out the top. Many are made that do both, there is a little damper thingy that you set when you install it.

Since you've been talking about a 'smaller' unit (lower CFM), the vent pipe will probably be 6" in diameter. Having not seen your situation, you could put a pipe this small along the top of the cabinets and hide it behind (perhaps) a flat piece of wood that matches you cabinet finish or the paint color of your walls. Or paint the pipe to match the walls.

My personal opinion of ductless units is like some blonds I know: they are pretty to look at but basically useless.

I assumed that even if I had the ductless hood, if I had charcoal filters and a stronger fan that it would help with the grease in the air. Or at least make a significant difference compared to what I have now. But maybe the charcoal filter don't really do much (at least I'm gathering in your opinion they don't). I was hoping the charcoal filter would as least catch the grease so I didn't have to wash the cabinet tops very often. I'm not really a fan of standing on my counter tops just to reach and scrub the cabinet tops that no one sees but I know are really gross.

As far as running the vent along the top, that is an idea I hadn't considered but might work pretty well. I already have most of the top of the cabinets lined with artificial greenery (that's also a pain to clean the greasy gunk off but I like the look of them there) which would hide most of the pipe behind it and if I painted it the same as the wall color I would think that even the parts that showed would blend in.

So in that scenario, (if I got this correct), then the pipe would run up from the range hood through the overhead cabinet. We'd have to cut a whole in the top and bottom of it and I would lose the corresponding space inside the cabinet. At the top of the cabinet we would have to make a 90 degree turn to the left and run a straight line 6 feet to the outer wall.

Is it likely that someone who is familiar with building stuff, siding, carpentry etc could do that project in 2 hours? Just asking because a friend of ours who does handyman, construction project for a living owes us a couple of hours for computer work my husband did for him and wondering if this project will fall in that time frame for a fair trade. When it comes to building stuff I'm completely clueless in determining how difficult or time consuming tasks are.

Thanks so much for your help, it's really helping me think through my options.

All of it should be straight-forward, but 2 hours sounds wildly optimistic to me.

Yes, the pipe will take up space in the cabinet above. You will need to determine if the fan uses a 3"x10" or 6" vent. If 3x10, you will need to get a 3x10-6" convertor. These are fairly common for AC ducting. You may need a 3x10 hole at the bottom of the cabinet and a 6" hole at the top with the convertor inside the cabinet. You will need a 90* elbow. You will need a vent cap for the outside.

Since you are replacing an existing unit, the electrical is already there.

We had ours ducted through the cabinet, straight through the ceiling and attic and out the roof. Luckily our cabs extend to the ceiling so no need to hide the duct. The duct does take up some cabinet space, but it is SO worth it to get the steam out of my face and the smells out of the house. (And the light! Much brighter than the old one and I can see what I'm cooking now.) We had this done a few months ago... I seem to remember it took our handyman and his assistant about 3-4 hrs the first day and then a couple of hours the next day to finish the part at the roof -- it started raining before they got to that the first day. He said ours was made easier by the straight run and the fact that we have a new roof.

Our old one was a recirculating hood but it had no charcoal filter that I know about (it was decades old), so all I can say about it is that the non-filtered ones are pretty useless.

I am not the right one to give advice on decor, but I would think that for a duct that extends above a cabinet, either boxing it in and painting the box the same as the wall or removing the cabinet and putting in a more decorative standalone hood would work.

The unit I bought and installed had a removable internal baffle that could direct the air straight up or straight out the back. I decided to have the air go straight out the back, into the wall like you are suggesting, and then turn up within the wall rather than going through the cabinet and loosing cabinet space.

The air-out opening is a 3 1/4" x 14" rectangular, which is a standard duct size designed to fit between 16"-on-center 2x4 studs (although it is significantly harder to find than 3 1/4" x 10").

My duct continues up inside the wall for about 6 feet at which point it transitions to a 8" round duct and goes through a slight bend and through the roof. (The transition and bend are inside a soffit.)

Routing the duct inside the wall was made easier by the fact that the wall was newly constructed.

Attached is an image of the result:
{{gwi:1453514}}{{!gwi}}