Help! Range hood height vs. venting
So my husband and I are in the middle of our kitchen renovation in our 1930s co-op apartment. We found out during demolition that at some point many years ago the previous owner was actually able to get a wall cut in the building so that the under-cabinet range hood actually vented outside. I was pretty excited to learn that because I had always assumed we'd have to have one of the recirculating ones (which I've heard are mostly useless).
Keeping the outdoor (rear) venting, though, meant we had to put the new range hood in the exact spot where the old one was. Which is only 24" above the stove. I didn't realize how low that truly was until the cabinets started going in today, and now I'm concerned that it's too low. We purchased a Bosch under-cabinet range, which sticks out fairly far. You can't really push it back, because it has a grill on the top that would get covered by the cabinet (if that makes sense). I'm worried that with the height and depth, it's going to be extremely annoying for cooking. I'm only 5'1", but it still seems quite low.
So my choices are: a) leave as is, preserve the outdoor venting and keep my lovely Bosch under-cabinet range; b) patch up the outdoor vent, move the cabinets higher up so the hood is 30" above the range, and just use the hood on recirculating c) return the lovely Bosch range for one that is less deep (I think Broan makes some; that was the kind that was in here pre-reno and had a much smaller footprint) .
Here are some pics -- hard to get a good one of the set-up now, since my husband had to just hold up the hood while I quickly snapped. The before pics give a better sense.
(And yes, we are bringing the other cabinets to the height of the range hood, we like them to look flush instead of having the range be higher).
Your help is appreciated!
Comments (23)
ci_lantro
8 years agoarielleeve
8 years agolast modified: 8 years agoRelated Discussions
Range Hood Exterior Vent - Wall vs Roof
Comments (1)Dumping the effluent onto the deck would be out of the question, in my view. At the roof, instead of a radial fan in a housing blowing air down the roof to the deck, use an "upblast" fan housing with compatible fan. Broan may still make such a unit (NuTone did) or search on the web. Even Greenheck may make one small enough. The upblast housing roof interface will have to be the correct pitch for the roof, and, if snow builds up very high in that location, high enough to keep the top out of the snow. kas...See MoreRange hood: Vent-a-hood vs. Best
Comments (6)I only saw one Ventahood where I could try to figure out if the cleaning or the more raw underside would bother me, and it was not connected to power so I don't know about their sound level. I've heard they are quieter and I've heard they are louder. I think the looks of the cages vs baffles would be more of an issue for me. While I was trying to decide whether that was a bit "raw" looking, I was led to a guy at the place where I bought my appliances who said he'd seen and heard both side by side. He said the Best by Broan was better for sound and operation, so I went with it. Very scientific, huh? Unfortunately, buying a vent is like that. I have a 1200 cfm model with an external blower and got the baffles. The blower sits just above my sink on the opposite side of my kitchen (better than the toilet or shower straight above --LOL) and it is quiet when you are outside. I'm not sure that in my set up the remote blower made that much difference. If I'd have another inch or two, I'd have been able to put in a silencer. Most of the time, I run the vent on the lowest setting or up to about 1/3 power -- rarely over 1/2. At that level, the fan on my ovens is as loud. You barely hear it away from the vent, but you will standing right under it. At full power, you will hear it, but even then it is not as loud as the ineffective downdraft my last cooktop had -- with only one speed. If you turn it on when you first start cooking and run it higher for things like fish, popcorn, bacon, you will not smell them all over the house. I made 120 bags of popcorn, both on the stovetop and in the microwave (bags opened under the vent)one afternoon. I delivered them to the school, came home and could not smell any popcorn. Maybe it could be more perfect, but I'm happy with my choice....See MoreChimney hood vs. over-range microwave vent
Comments (3)I think it is a valid statement that a chimney hood is closer to ideal for capture and containment than most microwave oven venting schemes. If you search for KVSApplDesign_catalog.pdf, a publication by Greenheck, and read it or even skim it, you will learn what is considered important for ventilating commercial cooking. From this base it is possible to "eyeball" residential devices and estimate how far they deviate from ideal and hence surmise whether or not they are the best solution for the space. It is important to keep in mind that you can have only two out of three among performance, affordability, and aesthetics. With respect to the association of "equal blower capacity" and the fact that two blowers are rated at equal CFM, I have to point out that neither blower will be operating in free air, so each has some pressure drop across it. For the blowers to be equal, their fan curves (flow vs. pressure drop) have to be equal. This is unlikely. Further, the microwave may be expected to have a more tortuous path for the air flow, causing it be operate farther to the left (lower flow rate, higher pressure drop) on its fan curve. This would be expected to further reduce its flow rate over that of the more conventional hood. Your candidate 30 x 22-inch hood is (ignoring wall thicknesses that I don't know) 4.6 square feet in nominal aperture area. The actual desired flow would be 4.6 x 90 ~ 400 CFM. With a leaky house but no deliberate MUA you would want a blower rated for at least 600 CFM. We can cut that down somewhat by arguing that induction has a lower plume velocity, and the type of cooking is less extravagant. From page 9 of the Greenheck document take the velocity requirement to be 50 ft/min instead of 90, and this yields 230 CFM actual. A 400 CFM rated blower with leakage MUA may work for this. However, 22 inches is not much frontal overlap, nor is a 30-inch wide hood much overlap for pans that may extend to the edges of a 30-inch induction cooktop. So, while what has been captured may be fully contained, unless your greasy cooking is done at the back, and a cabinet side partly blocks the cooking plume expansion toward the side of the hood, some odor and grease may be expected to still be present in the room. For a higher level of capture, a 36 x 27 inch hood would be preferred. This would, however, require deliberate MUA, depending on how your code requirement is worded, what combustion appliances you have and their sources of MUA, and whether your AHJ understands what safety issues MUA is intended to avoid. kas...See MoreTorn: hood vs. over-range microwave, no exterior vent. Help?
Comments (37)Wow, I'm very grateful to all of you who took the time to reply! Great to see your pictures, too. Some responses (if you're interested), now that I've finally been able to go through: Sammy and The Kitchen Place are correct that we could put it in the upper above the dishwasher — that's the only upper that is the right size that wouldn't block other cabinets. (Thanks for the pictures, The Kitchen Place!) I was intrigued by nidnay's idea of bumping into the bedroom closet, but that closet is filled with custom cabinetry so it would be a huge project to put the microwave there.If Icould put a Miele microwave (/speed oven) in an upper cabinet, I'd try for that, but of course our uppers are only 13" deep and the Miele opens down, so not workable. My better half is against mounting a "normal" microwave in an upper cabinet (he thinks in that case we might as well go OTR, and that it will pull away from the pretty stove/hood that's the whole reason for this conundrum). (ci_lantro questions the whole premise of opening the kitchen. Others in our building have done it and it makes a significant difference in the feeling of the whole unit—we're confident it's the right move, long term.) Helen, HU-41121833, Buehl, Interior Concept, RTHawk and others: Thanks for saying good things about the Sharp microwave drawer. nidnay, thanks for your criticisms of it, too! The slimline microwaves are attractive too! Unfortunately induction sounds great, but not in the cards for us. I do believe everybody who says we need something more powerful than a microwave fan — the Vent-A-Hood system does look quite good. kaseki, thanks for your hood comments. pittsburrito, I hear what you're saying about external ventilation. There is a small vent in the kitchen and windows in the living room, so we try to be careful. Thank you all! Still not sure what we'll do, but I'm grateful for all the advice on the Houzz forums....See More
sherri1058
8 years agoarielleeve
8 years ago
Fori
8 years agoarielleeve
8 years agoBuehl
8 years agopractigal
8 years agoarielleeve
8 years agoarielleeve
8 years agoarielleeve
8 years ago
funkycamper
8 years agoarielleeve
8 years agolast modified: 8 years agoOK, so now that height has been resolved, next issue! So, most under-cabinet range hoods are made for 12" deep cabinets, but Ikea's cabinets are 15" deep. So Ikea sells these small filler pieces that mount behind the range hood, which we did buy, but when our contractor initially mounted it he didn't put the filler piece in. So the hood is all the way back. We're torn about whether we should have him move it forward and put in the filler piece: on the one hand, I kind of like that it's further back in space, which addresses my issue the hood being low and hitting our heads on it while cooking (and just generally gives the thing a smaller, more discreet footprint). On the other hand, because the hood is meant to be mounted to a 12" deep cabinet, it means that when mounted all the way back, the top of it starts to slope down before the end of the cabinet, instead of remaining flush and starting to slope down at the end of the cabinet, which I think looks a little awkward.
What would you do? Move the hood forward so it fits as its supposed to (and install filler panel? Or take advantage of the opportunity to move it back in space? Pictures attached (how it looks now). FTR -- We will likely be installing cover panels on the sides of the cabinets, so the side of the range will actually be covered. Only the front might look a little weird because of the gap.
nancyjwb
8 years agoarielleeve
8 years agosherri1058
8 years ago
Debbi Branka
8 years ago
Errant_gw
8 years agoLE
8 years agomathteachr
8 years agoarielleeve
8 years agoOK everyone -- thanks in part to your overwhelming support, we had them move it forward. Here's what it looks like now. SO much better. Thanks for all the advice!
nancyjwb
8 years ago
funkycamper