Ventilation Hood Advice: Vent-A-Hood or Miele Insert Liner
Joseph Fitzgerald
6 years ago
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Joseph Fitzgerald
6 years agoRelated Discussions
Hood Liner Insert w/ Extra Depth
Comments (9)lamermaid: Great points, and a great ongoing conversation. I have been perhaps overly repetitive in my opinions about VAH hoods. Like others (keitel comes to mind, especially as his (her?) "My Ventahood drives me insane" thread has recently been resurrected), what makes me crazy are the large number of posters who automatically suggest VAH as the "best" option whenever a ventilation request is posted. In particular, I am struck by how many folks who tout VAH's do so based on one of two things: 1) "the salesman at my appliance store says VAH is the best and that the [fill in the blank] hood is inferior because of..... (failing to mention that it's the only brand of hoods he sells) or 2) "I have one and I think it's great" (posted by someone who has never had a hood other than a VAH to compare to). In contrast, you are someone with personal experience with more than one brand and style of hood. Thus, your opinion counts, in my mind, much more. And I do believe that much of the advantage that I perceive in my hood is not so much from the fact that it's an MA, but rather than we have a remote blower and silencer, which I think is a wonderful setup. The reason I've been such an MA fan is the amazing customer support. I also love dealing with a small, American company that still actually manufactures here in the States (when I called to check on the status of my hood, the woman who answered literally ran back into the shop, found my hood under construction, spoke with guy building it, and came back with a hard estimate on completion--try that with VAH or Broan!). If I can buy a handcrafted, custom hood, which uses proven baffle technology, and which allows the use if desired of a remotely located blower, infinitely variable speed control, remote switching for lights and fan speed, etc, for the same price as a VAH--which if I'm not mistaken, requires the use of four separate squirrel cage blowers, each of which needs to be washed by hand, to achieve 1200 cfm, then I'm hard pressed to understand why the VAH would be a better choice. But.....as you've already pointed out, mine is an overly-obsessed opinion that everyone should take with multiple grains of salt. Having said that, we still love our Dacor PGM36 cooktop. It was my first experience with a modern, high performance cooktop and I still have lots of fun cooking on it. It's a great looking piece, still love the blue LED indicators on the knobs, and the 15K burner is more than adequate for my frequent searing etc. For that "space" (36'' five burner drop-in cooktop) I still can't see anything that would outdo it. The Lacanche is however at another level entirely. It's just a piece of art, classic, yet performs fabulously, with two 18K burners, two ovens, french top, etc etc. I do think it's a tougher question if you're limited to roughly 30'', and to only the one oven in the range, and I'd think hard about that choice--we also liked the Wolf and I'd be very happy, though not quite so passionate, if that was what we had gotten. Post questions to the longstanding LC thread....See MoreDo you love/hate your hood/hood liner? Why?
Comments (3)I have written about my Tradewind liner many times on here . It is wonderful. We have used it hard for 7 years. It is quiet and efficient and easy to clean . We have a 1400 cfm/54" wide system with the roof mounted blower. Sjerin has the unit also, after reading my reviews. and told me on another thread the other day how great it is. Our GC built the custom surround for the liner. He installed all duct work and the roof blower. It is wonderfully quiet and I only use it on low or med most of the time. We stir fry and deep fry a lot so I have tested it to the max for years. I remove the baffles weekly and clean them. They are always a mess :) A great sign. After all these years I have never cleaned one spot of grease off of my open shelves adjacent to the cooking area or off of the wood surround. No need to...it all goes on the baffles. I hope that you can find what will serve you well. Oh and no I do not have nor did I need make up air. We have 11 and 12 ft ceilings in an 1890 home so there is plenty of air. I have no problem with my gas fire places while using the blower. Here are 2 pics and if you click on it there are many more in the albums. c...See MoreHelp for the right height and hood insert/vent system in new kitchen
Comments (13)opaone opined. I think there is a fairly direct relationship between the baffle area, CFM's and noise. More CFMs for a given set of baffles (and constant baffle area) will increase baffle turbulence noise. However, baffle noise (generally a hiss sound) is not dominant unless a silencer is used with a remote blower. Otherwise, blower blade turbulence noise can be expected to dominate at the flow rates needed when cooking with hot pans (grease or oil near the smoke point). The larger the baffles the less the noise for any given CFM. I assume though that likewise the larger the baffle/CFM the less grease is removed? Two things are happening here. First, if the flow velocity near the baffles is not high enough, rising effluent will reflect from baffle surfaces and potentially escape from the hood aperture. Second, if the velocity in the baffles is not high enough, grease particles from the larger end of the particle spectrum will not be collected as well as they should be, causing them to pass into the ducting where they may condense on the duct surfaces. @Kaseki, do you know if there are any guidelines for baffle design/size/CFM for proper residue removal? Certainly those in the business of designing hoods and baffles will have design rules they use. I haven't come across any specific baffle design guidelines, but hood guidelines for use of particular baffles exist for those sources that produce baffles for commercial uses. Below are links to two example baffle (systems) with their pressure characteristics. (Links may need to be copied and inserted into one's browser.) http://productadmin.componenthardware.com/pdfRepository/repositoryFiles/20120906_025437_type%20i_product%20info_11-2011.pdf http://productadmin.componenthardware.com/pdfRepository/repositoryFiles/20120906_025211_type%20ii_product%20info_11-2011.pdf Baffles are going to be relatively simple on residential baffle arrays, and may have been experimentally tested and revised before production to yield decent effectiveness at minimal production cost. Are there trade-offs to that 90 CFM per sq ft aperture? EG, what happens if it's only 75 CFM? My simplifications are intended to avoid the extreme complexity of a problem space that can best be analyzed by computational fluid dynamics (CFD). What we have is a plume extent that has a shape, and associated with that shape is a velocity profile. The velocity changes with height and angle. When this plume enters the flow field close to the baffles, a lot of possible flow effects can happen, depending on the plume momentum and baffle details. There are also the tapered sides of the hood to consider as well as flat surfaces around the baffles. Picking the worst case plume velocity (~1.2 m/s) and demanding it be met by the baffle air velocity at the baffle gaps, and treating the plume shape (relatively bi-variate Gaussian) as a 10-degree constant velocity expanding cone for capture analysis seem to be adequate assumptions to avoid having readers later whine that their hoods were inadequate. 90 ft/min averaged over the aperture is just one of those approximations where the reality is that cooler cooking will require less, hence induction will require less than gas cooking due to lack of entrained hot gas combustion products in the plume, and in some cases will require more, except that the hood typically extends beyond some parts of any given plume thereby aiding containment of some momentum-degraded sideways drifting effluent near the baffles. Further, the overall air flow has some small capture influence beyond the edges of the hood entrance aperture, particularly for the lower velocity portions of the higher angle plume portions, and the overall flow over the cooking surface tends to move air toward the hood which also has some influence farther down for low velocity effluent. So, for many cases 75 CFM/sq.ft. may be adequate. Below is a copy of a table providing recommended updraft velocities for different cooking devices taken from one of the most useful of on-line sources, the Greenheck guide available at: http://www.greenheck.com/media/pdf/otherinfo/KVSApplDesign_catalog.pdf Note that this is for a 4-ft x 9-ft commercial hood probably 7 ft above the floor. Also note that there are various factors involved in using these numbers that may be found in the accompanying text. And of particular interest to me is that "wok" is listed with the "extra-heavy" category. This is probably applicable to Asian restaurant wok burners providing 100k - 200k BTU/hr gas jets. For residential wok cooking, the plume effects from the burner will be much less, but the temperature at the wok surface may be similar -- meaning that some parts of the plume velocities may be similar. So where should a residential wok be located in the table? I have induction for both cooktop and wok hob, and roughly 90 CFM/sq. ft. maximum air flow rate into my Wolf Pro Island hood, mounted at 34-inches over a peninsula, and it does a pretty good capture and containment job. Wall mount instead of island mount, gentle cooking instead of grilling or wokking, induction instead of gas, and other factors such as no cross drafts or an oversized hood may allow lower specific flow rates to be adequate relative to the table or others' experiences. Further, the reality is that for the most affordable MUA schemes, the inherent pressure loss will degrade the hood flow rate beyond that due to just duct and baffle pressure losses. So the renovator's task when contemplating 90 CFM/sq.ft. is to divine the degree to which my conservatism is overkill in the context of the entire ventilation system, kitchen layout, and cooking style, and design accordingly. kas...See MoreRecommendation For A Rear Venting Insert Liner for Kitchen Hood
Comments (19)Thanks for help. FWIW, the distance from concrete soffit to floor is 7 feet as expected. I have narrowed it down to either Zephyr or Kobe insert liner as both have the horizontal vent in the rear. The horizontal attachment will be moved slightly to the left as that will be where the new cooktop will be moved. I am assuming that there will be some kind of attachment to the current opening which vents to the building's venting system - whence it goes after it leaves my kitchen I have no cares as long as it passes inspection. I am not familiar with either of these brands - does anyone have any recommendations as to one or the other. My venting needs frankly are minimal as I don't deep fry and will have an induction cooktop. I am considering mid range in each brand: KOBE CORE COLLECTION - This retails for about $850. It's ADA compliant with a remote which seems like it would be more convenient than reaching for controls under the cabinet. Monsoon I Insert Monsoon I takes one-piece liners to the next level. Includes dual-level halogen lights, and ADA-compliant wireless remote control, 6-speed electronic controls and either a powerful 600 CFM blower (30″ and 36″ models) or 1,200 CFM blower (42″ and 48″ models). ACT™ available on all models. Vertical and horizontal Zephyr - I couldn't find any functional difference in these two models except one has slightly higher CFM but I am sure the lower would be perfectly adequate for my needs DELUXE IN26 SQB-650-5A BUILT IN / INSERT 30" - 36" 700 CFM $803.49 PREMIUM IN2630SQB-700-2 BUILT IN / INSERT 30" - 30" 750 CFM Build.com $771...See Morehomepro01
6 years agolast modified: 6 years agoJoseph Fitzgerald
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