Solutions
For a kitchen that is more show than use and that does not have a gas range or cooktop this is not much of a problem and almost any hood will suffice. Otherwise we’ll want to carefully consider our options.
Also keep in mind that it’s best to eliminate effluent as close to the source as possible. Once spread out it it much more difficult to remove*.
A - Downdraft. As mentioned above it is just about impossible to overcome the force of hot rising effluent. Downdraft is nearly useless and will only exhaust about 0 and 5% of effluent.
B - Recirculating. Potentially a good solution though none currently on the market actually work and should be avoided. To work properly they need a system that effectively filters the air to remove grease, moisture, odors, gas by-products and heat — the purpose of an exhaust hood. The filter system to do this requires about a 3’x3’x5’ space, costs about $9,000 and uses a lot of energy. Even being energy conscience and not liking the idea of exhausting conditioned air and bringing in outside air that needs to be conditioned, this is not a good investment.
C - Vent-A-Hood. Will capture and exhaust about 20-50% of effluent. However, these are noisier and more difficult to clean than standard consumer hoods.
D - Wolf, Zephyr, Bluestar, Best/Braun, ModernAire. These consumer hoods suffer from poor design. They lack sufficient open aperture and containment area, have baffles at not sufficient enough angle to drain off grease (so must be cleaned more often and don't work as well between cleanings), and often lack sufficient air distribution behind the baffle filters. They will capture and exhaust about 20-50% of effluent. The remaining 50-80% of steam, odors, grease and by-products of gas combustion will spread out in the kitchen and house until the air in the house is exchanged enough to reduce them.
Note. There is a popular video of a sales person placing a smoke bomb in a pan to show how good one of these works. This is quite deceptive. The deception is in using cold smoke. Hot bursty effluent that results from cooking reacts much differently and will not bend in to a hood the way the cold smoke does.
E -
F - CaptiveAire, Greenheck, HoodMart. These are commercial hoods. They have sufficient open aperture, containment volume, filtration, and exhaust to properly handle the effluent.
Solutions Part II - The Gap
Solution E above is not a mistake. There is currently a huge gap between the minimally effective consumer hoods (C & D) and commercial hoods (F) such as CaptiveAire.
Hoods in C & D, along with a proper MUA system are likely sufficient for many people who do not cook much, do not produce much in the way of effluent or do not mind lingering odors. We’ve had a Vent-A-Hood over our all gas Wolf range for about 15 years and while we do want something that works much better, we have done OK and could certainly go another 15 years if we had to.
A commercial hood however is large, expensive and likely overkill for most.
A good solution for many people (E) is somewhere in the gap — a hood that has a sufficient and fully open aperture of 27” to 36” deep, a proper volume of containment area, effective and fairly easy to clean filters, and a multi-speed inline fan. Hopefully Bluestar, Wolf, CaptiveAire, ModernAire or someone will begin offering something like this.
To be continued...
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SIMILAR LAYOUT
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