Vent hood question - make-up air turbulence, acceptable neg pressure?
Adam F
6 years ago
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Adam F
6 years agoRelated Discussions
Need advice for a make-up air system for vent hood
Comments (10)First, this is what the proper calculations would say about Risinger's installation. OR THIS Second, short circuiting a hood, air curtains, and generally any makeup air introduced too close to the range will produce counterproductive turbulence that will reduce the effectiveness of the hood to the point that he may as well have just put in a 400 CFM fan without makeup air. Third, the floor under the range is required to be sealed from drafts on most ranges. But, you can't usually shove ALL that air through the HVAC system either...See More300cfm Hood vs. 600cfm Hood Requiring Make Up Air?
Comments (11)It would be best to start any quest involving kitchen ventilation to study the literature, or at least study the many many threads here on the topic. I would prefer to write answers to questions that are based on my possibly inadequate previous writing than generate yet another long message covering the entire topic. You may wish to start with the "Hood FAQ" which can be found by searching. I believe it is listed under @opaone. Hoods are about capture and containment, and success in this depends on many factors, the most critical of which is sufficient air flow velocity at the hood entry to ensure that which is captured is contained and expelled from the residence. This velocity is independent of how many burners are running at once, but rather what the cooking surface temperature is plus plume heat augmentation by gas burners. In any case, the 100 CFM per 1000 BTUh is derived from certain standardized commercial hoods, not residential hoods. See the Greenheck Guide available at https://www.tagengineering.ca/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/KVSApplDesign_catalog.pdf for comparison between the 100 CFM per rule of thumb and the hood aperture velocity rule. I suggest 90 CFM per square foot of hood entry aperture, and this aperture needs to be large enough to overlap the rising and expanding cooking plumes. Let me adjust the salesman's statement: "...because the design pulls more air than a filtered/baffled hood of the same [zero static pressure rated] cfm [when hanging unattached to anything in free air]." Ventahood use squirrel-cage blowers that also perform the function of baffle filters, thereby eliminating that cause of pressure loss. However, as blowers go, they are more susceptible to other pressure losses than conventional blowers, and hence if there is extensive ducting, or inadequate MUA, their flow rate will be less than the actual rate asserted. My guess is that you should have a 24 x 42 inch hood aperture, requiring an actual 630 CFM obtained from a 900 - 1000 CFM rated blower. Read MUA related threads to determine how closely the interior air pressure has to match the exterior air pressure for safety. Your state may require heated MUA. There are a lot of ways to accomplish MUA under these conditions, and the threads here should help you understand what you have to tell us to allow better tailored help. kas...See MoreVent Hood Duct: Size, Gauges, Material, and Make-Up Air
Comments (20)"The manufacturers of Vent Hoods are miseducating the consumers." Yes. Somewhat. Not really. They are in business to make money and they do that by making hoods as inexpensively as possible and then selling as many as they can for as much money as they can. Their goal is NOT your health or the IAQ of your home - that is up to you. Telling consumers that they'll also need to spend money on MUA if they buy hood X will negatively impact their sales (ignorant consumer will just go buy a hood from brand Y instead because it doesn't say you need MUA even though it has an identical need for MUA) so they do not want to do that. MUA is also not something that fits well within consumer hood manufacturers world except to the extent that they might offer a hood w/ integrated front curtain ducting. It is much more of a pure HVAC thing. It can be supplied to the return ducts of an HVAC system, the supply ducts or ducted directly to appropriate locations. Incoming air can be heated by gas, electric or hydronic. Incoming air may need to be humidified or dehumidified. It often needs to be electrically integrated with the HVAC system controllers to function properly. Consumer hood manufacturers - ARE NOT IAQ or HVAC people or engineers - they make something decorative that by nature must include air movement so they reluctantly include air movement in their product. Commercial hood manufacturers - ARE IAQ and HVAC people and engineers. Their customers are much more educated than consumers. The one singular purpose of the product they are selling is IAQ - so they design and sell systems that provide good IAQ. Aesthetics is quite secondary for them. Residential HVAC companies in the U.S. - ARE NOT IAQ people (they should be though). A tiny few, less than about 1%, know it well and a few more know it a very little but the vast majority know just enough, based on what they've been told at a 4 hr CEU course, to sound like they know what they're talking about but they don't really understand it. Most residential HVAC people do not understand air movement or why things are done the way they are - they only know how to use tables that tell them to do this or that and as soon as something is outside of defined parameters they're totally lost (though sometimes don't even realize that they're lost). Licensed Professional Engineers do (or most do, some don't) understand air movement and other elements. They are the people who create the tables that HVAC people use. They can think independently. Defined parameters for them are not tables but the physics of air - it's movement, temperature and components. Unfortunately, most U.S. engineers do not have a good understanding of human physiology (except perhaps for biomedical engineers). They do not, for instance, understand how CO2 functions in our bodies and how high levels of CO2 due to poor ventilation affect us. Or how poor ventilation resulting in high levels of VOC's, PM, Carcinogens and Pathogens affect us....See Moreneed advice! 800 CFM range hood and make-up air
Comments (28)"Thank you, Kaseki! I’ve been reading your past posts-would you mind sharing again what cooking device/range hood/ makeup air system you chose and why?" You may find images of elements of my kitchen in various posts. I won't repeat them here. Also, some hood flow parameters may be found in FAQ I. Please note that my kitchen reno planning began in 2007, with most purchases of appliances made at the end of that year. Delivery was taken significantly later for most items, but well in time to confirm measurements and interface details. Explaining rationale would make this tediously long, take too much of my time, and jack this thread. I owe a kitchen photo to the FAQ II thread, and one or more should appear in the fullness of time. The cooktop: I have two induction cooktops, a 36-inch Frigidaire Gallery (replacing a 36-inch Electrolux clone Kenmore that failed after 5 years or so) and a Cooktek 3500W induction wok. These are set in soapstone over cabinets in which there is added stone support and wire racks for pans, providing maximum air volume for cooling. The hood system: Overspreading these is Wolf's largest Pro Island hood set at 34.5 inches above the counter. The hood connects to a damper, then a Fantech silencer, and then a Wolf (Broan) 1500 CFM roof blower (which has a damper). (As I have explained many times, once installed in a hood system blowers cannot flow their rated CFM due to pressure losses. I have measured, however, about 1000 CFM with presently passive MUA and no other household exhaust blowers operating.) Duct is 10-inch. The secondary hood system: There is a secondary system comprising a pair of ceiling registers (14 x 20 if I recall), 3M Filtrite filters in the register boxes, a damper, silencer, and roof mounted NuTone down-blast blower. I believe this blower is rated 600 CFM, but can't find my literature for it as it was originally bought to provide additional flow for a '70s cooking center with miniscule blower performance. The registers are ceiling mounted over a pair of Wolf wall ovens. The MUA: I have planned an active MUA system, but all parts have not yet been acquired. There seems to be no end to new "required" projects. The system as it presently exists is operated passive, and comprises a highly ventilated attic with an additional roof-mounted down-blast commercial blower housing for eventual ducted air intake, a one-inch pleat 24 x 24 furnace filter (to be replaced with a lower pressure loss 4-inch pleated canister version, a 30 x 30 heat exchanger connected to my oil-fired hydronic heating system, and a 36 x 36 diffuser at the end of a hall that connects to the kitchen. The control system for this is intended to keep the kitchen pressure equal to the outdoor pressure (which will be the attic pressure once the MUA is ducted). Some elements of this are place. A Fuji computer module in a DIN control array next to my furnace will attempt to adjust its natural frequencies (poles and zeros) such as to make a stable MUA system independent of the main hood flow rate, the wall oven vent flow rate, and bathroom blower flow rates. The differential pressure sensor upstream and motor downstream control loops are 20 mA current type. Separate sensors and controls are used to keep the heat exchanger from freezing when not in use and otherwise keeping the air passing it temperate. Blower will be the largest that can get into the attic that Fantech sells that incorporates the 10 Vdc control voltage motor. (I forget the part number.) This wasn't available back ca. 2010, nor did Fantech list a motor controller that could handle that size motor back then. If starting from scratch, I would investigate the present offerings of Electro and Fantech to minimize my work, but large flow rate in an assembled unit would likely not fit into the attic without removing the diffuser and heat exchanger for a one-time installation. While balanced air pressure is highly desirable for several reasons repeated often on this forum, I should note that my System 2000 oil furnace has its own MUA and a sealed exhaust stack installed within the original brick chimney that served the previous one- and two-generations-back Beckett boilers. The hot water storage is heated via a hydronic loop on the furnace, and the dryer is electric. Hence, back-drafting of combustion appliances is not an issue. To deal with the flow to the MUA heat exchanger (capable of 120k BTUh if necessary) as well as the longer reaches of my house hydronic plumbing, I use a larger (higher head vs. flow rate) Taco pump than is usual....See MoreAdam F
6 years agoAdam F
6 years agoAdam F
6 years ago
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