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Vent hood question - make-up air turbulence, acceptable neg pressure?

Adam F
6 years ago

Hi all. We've got a 48" DCS range, a Best/Broan Pro 54" hood with an 1100CFM remote blower, and make-up air that comes powered into vents under the cabinets on either side of the range that can blow in 800-1150CFM depending on a dial setting...

My issue is this - if the fans are turned up all the way, we get a lot of turbulent air, and the front burners, in particular, have a lot of odor escaping the hood. Smoke isn't an issue, but cooking smells are.

My questions are these:

1. What amount of cooking smell escape is just a reality? I know that perfect is the enemy of good.

2. How much could turbulent air be blowing the smells all over the place?

3. How negative can I make the kitchen, and will that help?

Some background: Our home is spray foamed and extremely tight, but we also keep the house about 200CFM positive with a fresh air intake and a HEPA system bringing in outside air. Before we had powered make-up air, one upstairs bedroom over the garage would get hot and humid (or cold in winter) when the hood was on - this was the leakiest spot in the house (though we have fixed some of that). We do not have significant backdraft sources (geothermal HVAC, no real fireplaces). That issue resolved with the powered make up air, but the smells and smoke aren't handled as well.

To add some confusion, we've always had a little bit of an issue with cooking smells upstairs where the exhaust duct runs, so I suspect a small amount of leak, but it's bearable, and I think it would be too hard to fix to worry about. Also, even when the smells get in the house, the HEPA and carbon filter do remove the smells reasonably quickly (12 hours).

Any wizards want to take a crack at this? Our amazing HVAC company is recommending we change to continuously variable fans that can do 0-100% (now we can only go down to 70%) so that we can experiment, but I don't want to do an expensive change if it may not fix our problem...

Thanks in advance!

Adam

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