Kaseki, New York State fuel gas code explicitly lists ranges as an appliance that do not need to be vented. Ventilation codes are a relatively new concept, as are induction stoves, compared to the age of buildings in the city. Our building does not have the electrical capacity for electric stoves. Pre-war charm I guess?

Most recirculating hoods I have looked at do use charcoal. In the same amount or as effectively as ARS? Not sure. I wish there were a rating system that shows how many pollutants or grease are removed so I could accurately compare systems. Do you know if there is any basis by which to judge?

"strict rules: we can only cook with gas and can't vent outside.

We cook a lot, use our microwave daily to reheat leftovers, care about our lung health and indoor air pollutants, and don't want a smelly greasy home."

These are at pretty much impossible odds with each other.

I'm not a fan of recirc hoods. They are better than nothing but not by much.

Opening a window may or may not help. My son and DIL lived in DUMBO for 7 years and most of the time found the outside air there to be quite awful. They had a fairly good exhausting range hood though and a newer HVAC system w/ MERV-13 filters (changed every 2 months) so inside was fairly tolerable. Even so, they moved to Maine and are noticeably much happier and healthier.

You could also look at making or buying a good recirculating air filter (Allison at EnergyVanguard.com has some good info on this as well as seetheair.wordpress.com). I think IQAir Health Pro Filters are quite good.

Realistically you're in a tough spot. The best option would likely be to move.

Get a good monitor such as an IQAIR AVP or AWAIR II so that you at least know what you're dealing with and if it's only slightly bad or 'we need to get out of here' bad.

KAS - Thanks for the link to that discussion thread. I read all 100 comments. It is so bizarre that there are no online reviews of the ARS, so it was really helpful to read about people who are actually using it.

1.) There is a lot of talk about capturing odor and grease. What about capturing nitrogen dioxide oxide and carbon monoxide? My understanding these are the main pollutants to worry about. Is there a way of measuring those in the kitchen air? I'd love to compare the readings on various ductless units.

2.) I noticed in the pics on the thread that a lot of the installs were on walls without uppers. We have a tight galley kitchen and need our uppers. Aside from looking a bit awkward and much more contemporary than our kitchen, what do you think about the side vents at the top being so close to cabinets on either side? The range is 30" so I anticipate that we'd have nearly 9" between the exit duct and each cabinet. Will the exhaust damage the wood on the cabinets?

It would be great if our cabinet maker could build something to house the ARS unit in so it didn't look so awfully out of place in our kitchen. I'm having a hard time imagining what that design would look like since the vents, it seems, should not just be shut inside a cabinet. Any thoughts?

Note, we are building a wall between the two windows in the picture above to turn this open concept kitchen into a galley kitchen. We will have two entrances to the kitchen, each with pocket doors so we can contain the visual clutter (dishes in the sink!) and not have grease spewing all over the apartment.

OPAONE - I think I'm in the same boat as the vast majority of NYC dwellers who live in old buildings and since we just purchased this otherwise phenomenal apartment, I think we'll figure a way to handle it.

We do have an IQ Air Filter, though our kitchen is too tight to fit it in there with the needed clearances, plus, I believe one really needs the vent to be above the cooking source.

A few quick thoughts...

Yes, CO is an issue and that I know of there is not a good way to eliminate it other than exhausting it to the outside. Activated charcoal effectiveness is at best unknown though it does not appear to be effective.

For cost effective CO monitoring get this: https://www.trutechtools.com/CO-Experts-2016-10-Low-Level-Carbon-Monoxide-Health-Monitor so that you'll at least know what you're being exposed to when. Or alternatively get a CO+NO2 meter. Those from from MSA are reliable but expensive.

My understanding of the VAH ARS is that it does not have very much activated charcoal and unfortunately there is not a good way that I know of to know when it is saturated and no longer effective without constantly measuring. Ideally they'd have a multigas and PM sensor suite measuring the exhausting air to tell you when to replace the filter or charcoal but I don't believe they do. So realistically you should replace the charcoal monthly ($75 per ?? or find a more cost effective alternative).

This is not an area I've done much research because it is largely ineffective. The only way to deal with CO, CO2 and many other VOC's and Carcinogens that I know of is exhausting to the outside and replacing with fresh outside make up air. PM, most Pathogens and some VOC's and Carcinogens can be somewhat effectively removed with good filters + regularly changed activated charcoal. (CO2 can be filtered out but the scrubbers to do so are wicked expensive).

More: https://bamasotan.us/range-exhaust-hood-faq/

You're in a tough spot from a health standpoint. Please keep us posted here with what you find out in your research.

Be extremely careful of manufacturer claims. U.S. laws are not very strict with what they can say or claim and do not require much in the way of accurate testing.

Opaone introduced the ultimate kitchen renovation approach: Realistically you're in a tough spot. The best option would likely be to move.

Questions about the ARS should be added to the ARS thread, or else the thread's OP should be called out. I believe that the vent slots in the ARS stack could be brought to a cabinet side or front with some care to minimize further pressure loss.

At least the ARS avoids the pressure related MUA issues. But for dilution of the concentrations of gasses not filtered, I think one or two open windows will be needed, and in such a case one may want to use some kind of filtering and air movement scheme. It might only have to be run for enough time to meet dilution requirements, whatever they turn out to be.

Opanone and Kaseki - I have responses but am moving them over to the ARS thread so it can all live in one place: https://www.houzz.com/discussions/2347276/vent-a-hood-ductless-ars-range-hood-update#n=65. Thanks a ton for all of your info.

How do you get fresh air in the apartment? Open windows or is there some other fresh air supply?

"OTR microwaves are plain ugly and seem pretty useless for venting."

• Any OTR microwave that vents to the outside would be better than a hood that just recirculates the kitchen air, wouldn't it?
• The low-profile Whirlpool WML55011Hx (400 CFM) and Kitchenaid KMLS311HSx (500 CFM) appear reasonably attractive and less obtrusive than standard-height models.

"...and hide a microwave in the cabinet above."

• Even very shallow countertop microwave ovens such as the GE Profile PEM31 won't fit in a standard 12"-deep upper cabinet. They're just too deep because they must accommodate a turntable.

Yes, we open windows for fresh air.

Thanks for the info on microwaves being too deep. We currently have one inside a cabinet, but I had not considered that it is a really deep pantry type cabinet and these will be wall hung and more shallow.

"Any OTR microwave that vents to the outside would be better than a hood that just recirculates the kitchen air, wouldn't it?"

That's a good question. I've no idea.

Some OTRMW's are exceptionally ineffective. So if it's only removing 5% of the harmful effluent and leaving 95% is that better or worse than a recirc that removes xx% of x harmful bits?

A recirc may be better when it's new with fresh charcoal and a fresh filter but if that charcoal gets saturated after 3 months and then not replaced for 6 years then we've got 5.5 years of totally ineffective charcoal?

I think the only way to know is to continuously measure it.

Neither are very good so we're kind of looking at the best of the worst solutions. Given what we're learning about IAQ it wouldn't surprise me, even for the U.S., to see more stringent requirements for kitchen exhaust (and whole house ventilation) and that older buildings like the OP is in modify them to provide for effective exhaust capability.

One more thing to think about.

I too am stuck in a situation where I can only have recirculating (but at least I can get induction). While I was researching recirculating hoods, I ran across a comment from a poster here. She said this in a recent thread about regrets in kitchen remodels.

I regret leaving a gap between cabinets and recirculating range hood; the air blows back down between. We have 30” induction and 30” hood with about 1.5” gap on either side between hood and cabinets. The problem is recirculating blows out the top, hits the side of cabinet and goes down to stove top. Without gap there would be no problem. This is problem when trying to add dry spices, they blow everywhere."

I would think that for a recirc mounted between cabinets that you could install a deflector duct to push the air out towards the middle of the room?

@opaone: "Some OTRMW's are exceptionally ineffective. So if it's only removing 5% of the harmful effluent and leaving 95% is that better or worse than a recirc that removes xx% of x harmful bits?"

What do you mean by "exceptionally ineffective"? Compared to what, no outside venting? Where are you getting these numbers? What do you mean, "if it's only removing 5% of the harmful effluent"? The OTR oven exhausts to the outside. It removes 100% of what passes through the oven's fan.

Thanks for info on opening the windows for fresh air. You could buy an indoor air quality monitor that has both carbon dioxide and particulate matter readouts. There are also carbon monoxide monitors that give numerical readouts. The pair could run under $500. If you start monitoring indoor air quality now, and understand what the accuracy and precision are for your monitors, it could help you decide what improvements are worth pursuing, if any. It is quite possible that continuing to open both windows will give you some fresh air even with a new wall built between them. If I lived there, I'd look into putting a fan in one open window to exhaust, and one in the other window to intake.

"What do you mean by "exceptionally ineffective"? Compared to what, no outside venting? Where are you getting these numbers? What do you mean, "if it's only removing 5% of the harmful effluent"? The OTR oven exhausts to the outside. It removes 100% of what passes through the oven's fan."

OTRMW's are generally not very effective with effluent removal. Yes, they likely remove 100% of what passes through the fan but how much is that?

Most of these not only lack containment area but some are actually negative as rather than flat they slope upwards so effluent simply follows that slope up and disperses throughout the room. Many also have very weak and very noisy fans. It doesn't take much static pressure in the ducting to make a 250 CFM OTRMW into a much less effective 75 CFM OTRMW.

And because of how loud they are people often don't want to use them and a OTRMW not turned on exhausts 0% of effluent.

OTOH, if you pair one w/ a good duct blower (or better, buy a OTRMW that is designed to use a remote blower) then you'll likely have much better capture efficiency. I believe Singer was getting very high capture by doing that and cooking one item (beans IIRC) on a back burner.

An OTRMW is certainly better than nothing and in a best case scenario about as good as lower end consumer hoods. But best case isn't very common.

@opaone "some are actually negative as rather than flat they slope upwards..."

• The ovens I've seen are basically boxes. Can you provide some examples of ovens whose bottoms slope upwards?

@opaone "so effluent simply follows that slope up and disperses throughout the room."

• Does this happen even when the oven's fan is on?

@opaone: "It doesn't take much static pressure in the ducting to make a 250 CFM OTRMW into a much less effective 75 CFM OTRMW."

• The low-profile Whirlpool and Kitchenaid ovens have CFM ratings of 400 and 500 respectively. Are these "much less effective" ovens? Would these ovens' airflow also drop by two-thirds? How do you know the amount of the reduction?

@opaone: "because of how loud they are people often don't want to use them..."

• How do you know that people often don't use them?

My friend came up with what I thought was a pretty brilliant idea: Wear an N-95 mask when cooking and an odor reducing splash guard to help contain grease and smells; if this turns out to not be useful, then get a fancy ARS down the line.

I suffer from a lot of allergies and have found wearing a face mask to be one of the few upsides of this past year. I now wear one while cleaning my house, walking past smokers, and dealing with nasty chemicals that trigger my allergies. I have zero problem with dawning one in my kitchen.

It may seem silly to some, but the mask and splatter guard options plus cracking the window are making me feel so much less stressed out than figuring out all of this science and shelling out the dough for a complicated vent that may or may not do the trick.