12-17-2023, 06:38 AM
I made burgers tonight and ran my cast iron pan a bit hotter than normal and ended up setting off the smoke alarms. The downdraft vents do very little in my experience. But also, I do this pretty regularly - cook with high heat and set off the smoke alarms. Its not a mistake, I intend to do what I'm doing. Clearly, I need a good vent hood. The burgers came out very well and were consumed quickly. Next time I'll try turning down the heat a bit.
For a lot of reasons this would likely happen when redoing the kitchen which is at least a little ways off but I still like to think about how I might tackle this.
First, I need to figure out the amount of air I need to move. There are a number of ways of calculating this but 600cfm seems like a good starting point and might go up from there. Calculations for this can be based on the BTUs of the stove but this seems like overkill - I'm not turning all the burners on high. Also, its a medium or small kitchen, depending upon your perspective - the house was built before open concept was a twinkle in the eye of HGTV and custom plaster work on the adjoining dining room says the footprint isn't changing.
Currently we have a cooktop in one spot and a wall oven in another. While I've come to appreciate the convenience of a wall oven, they're impossible to vent. The oven will go where the cooktop is, which is about 5 feet from an exterior wall. Not as good as being completely against the exterior, but not bad.
Then there's a choice to make. The kitchen wall behind the cooktop terminates at the exterior right where there's a chimney. Now, it would be nice to vent through the chimney and it might be possible, but its one of those things where you'll need to overlook a long list of reasons why its a bad idea - mostly concerns about grease collection and needing a chimney liner. Frankly, I'm not scared and will likely get a quote but I wonder if contractors will just 'nope' that sort of thing. I could zigzag around the chimney which would probably be easier and cheaper. The chimney is currently used by our gas burning boiler but that will end when its replaced. Based on age its due for replacement but it gives us no problems.
Of course, the more distance and turns your add to your ducting, the more cfm you need from your fan. Oh, makeup air - if you run a big enough fan you need to bring in air. I live in a drafty old house but its not clear how that affects a range vent hood. I need to insulate the sill plate and windows are being repaired, not sure if that will effect anything.
I think this is a long way of saying that we'll redo a couple of bathrooms first but I have no idea if or when that might happen - I can't stomach the current going rates for contractors right now. Don't get me wrong, hiring can be a great time and money savings but my parents just paid to redo a shower and it cost $10k. My father would usually do a project like that - they mostly learned that a contractor can be all the mistakes and hassle that you might make AND you're paying for the privilege. The shower was nothing fancy. I'd redo a bathroom myself but I'm working on completing other projects around the house such as organizing closets and just dealing with boxes of stuff. The bathrooms might be done by now if I wasn't raising kids.
For a lot of reasons this would likely happen when redoing the kitchen which is at least a little ways off but I still like to think about how I might tackle this.
First, I need to figure out the amount of air I need to move. There are a number of ways of calculating this but 600cfm seems like a good starting point and might go up from there. Calculations for this can be based on the BTUs of the stove but this seems like overkill - I'm not turning all the burners on high. Also, its a medium or small kitchen, depending upon your perspective - the house was built before open concept was a twinkle in the eye of HGTV and custom plaster work on the adjoining dining room says the footprint isn't changing.
Currently we have a cooktop in one spot and a wall oven in another. While I've come to appreciate the convenience of a wall oven, they're impossible to vent. The oven will go where the cooktop is, which is about 5 feet from an exterior wall. Not as good as being completely against the exterior, but not bad.
Then there's a choice to make. The kitchen wall behind the cooktop terminates at the exterior right where there's a chimney. Now, it would be nice to vent through the chimney and it might be possible, but its one of those things where you'll need to overlook a long list of reasons why its a bad idea - mostly concerns about grease collection and needing a chimney liner. Frankly, I'm not scared and will likely get a quote but I wonder if contractors will just 'nope' that sort of thing. I could zigzag around the chimney which would probably be easier and cheaper. The chimney is currently used by our gas burning boiler but that will end when its replaced. Based on age its due for replacement but it gives us no problems.
Of course, the more distance and turns your add to your ducting, the more cfm you need from your fan. Oh, makeup air - if you run a big enough fan you need to bring in air. I live in a drafty old house but its not clear how that affects a range vent hood. I need to insulate the sill plate and windows are being repaired, not sure if that will effect anything.
I think this is a long way of saying that we'll redo a couple of bathrooms first but I have no idea if or when that might happen - I can't stomach the current going rates for contractors right now. Don't get me wrong, hiring can be a great time and money savings but my parents just paid to redo a shower and it cost $10k. My father would usually do a project like that - they mostly learned that a contractor can be all the mistakes and hassle that you might make AND you're paying for the privilege. The shower was nothing fancy. I'd redo a bathroom myself but I'm working on completing other projects around the house such as organizing closets and just dealing with boxes of stuff. The bathrooms might be done by now if I wasn't raising kids.
