How to choose a kitchen hood? What you need to know when choosing?

In this review, we will talk about kitchen hoods, what they are and how they differ from each other, in the article we will consider their pros and cons, material options and type of connection, as well as try to figure out what you need know and what to look for when buying a kitchen hood.

Conventionally, depending on the shape and design solution, hoods can be divided into several types. Almost all types of hoods can be connected both to the ventilation duct for air exhaust, and operate in recirculation mode (when the air passing through the filters of the hood, already cleaned, is returned back to the room.)

Hood kitchen type

• Visor - The most famous and common option. It is a flat visor, inside of which the motor and filter elements are located.
  
  
• Built-in - This option does not have a side trim and is designed to be built into a kitchen cabinet. Built-in hoods can have high performance and performance.
  
  
• Dome - The classic version, in fact, it is a built-in hood with an external finish made in the form of a dome, where the dome can be of various shapes and have a continuation in the form of an air duct rising to the ceiling.
  
  
• Inclined - Appeared relatively recently, now this type of hood is very widely represented. Inclined hood - in fact, a new type, the principle of which is based on the peripheral suction of air. It has a modern design, the air intake grille of this hood is located at an angle.
  
  
• Island - differs from the previous options in that it is attached to the ceiling, and not to the wall, it can also have control located immediately on both sides.
  
  
  

Pros and cons of hood designs

If we consider the pros and cons of the design of the options listed above, we can note the following.

Visor - This type of hood is probably familiar to everyone, perhaps their main disadvantage is in a slightly outdated design. It should be noted that this type of hood is mainly represented by models with a rather low fan power and, accordingly, low performance. Most often, the hood has a restriction on connecting an air duct with a diameter of up to 120mm. Also, it is worth considering that hoods of this type are practically not represented by models with a width of more than 60 cm.
The advantage of such a hood can be called its low cost.


It is also worth noting that in many models of such hoods, the grease filter is not located in an aluminum quick-release frame, but is hidden behind a perforated lattice casing of the hood itself. Accordingly, by removing the aluminum filter mesh from the casing, you can clean it with improvised means and chemicals, or wash it in the dishwasher without fear that the aluminum will become stained or darken, losing its appearance, as is usually the case with frame removable filters. Again, thanks to this version of the filter device, the mesh can be easily replaced with a new one that is close in size.

Recessed - The only disadvantage of this type of hood is that it is only suitable for installation in a kitchen cabinet or decorative dome.
But, this option has a lot of advantages. Built-in models of hoods are widely represented on the market in a very different price range.

You can choose models in width, from the narrowest at 50 cm to the widest 90 cm, there are various options for the type of control, design and power with a diameter of the connected air duct up to 150mm.
Among the built-in models, you can find options with a retractable visor that allows you to almost double the area of the grease filter. The advantage, also, is the ability to hide the air duct leading to ventilation behind the furniture facades.

Dome - Probably the biggest disadvantage of the dome hood is that it is installed in plain sight, and therefore, its walls must be periodically cleaned of dust and dirt.
Dome hoods, like built-in hoods, are very widely represented in retail, you can choose the option you like for design and power, there is also a choice in width, which can vary from 50 cm to 90 cm.
When buying a domed hood, you should pay attention to the material from which it is made, stainless steel models and simply steel ones, covered with enamel on top, are widely represented, we will talk about the materials in the finish of the hoods, their pros and cons separately, a little later.

Inclined - Relatively recently, inclined hoods with perimeter air intake have appeared on the market. It is certain that such hoods, thanks to their unusual shape and finishes, have quickly become part of the daily life of many homeowners.

Perhaps many will not agree with me, but I still consider the main disadvantage of such a hood to be its lower efficiency compared to a built-in or dome hood.
Let's imagine that heat and fumes are rising from the stove located under the hood, which are characteristic of cooking.

The depth of an ordinary dome hood is 48 - 50 cm, the standard depth of an inclined one is 35 and much less often 45 cm, it is quite obvious here that almost all the rising fumes from the stove are intercepted by the horizontal one, and for an inclined one, only part of the fumes gets into the zone of the retracting grate.

Someone will say that the same perimeter suction works here, yes, of course it works, but you yourself can compare it with the work of a conventional vacuum cleaner by trying to suck in the smoke coming from the incense stick located on the side of the vacuum cleaner nozzle.

The smoke is perfectly sucked up only at a close distance, and by placing the suction pipe at some distance from the going smoke, it can be seen that the smoke is no longer sucked into the vacuum cleaner, and it is worth remembering that the hood is still not a vacuum cleaner.
In the dome hood, due to its design, or rather, due to the presence of a dome above the source of smoke, air enters even when the fan is turned off, as if by itself.

From which the following conclusions can be drawn, when connected to a working ventilation duct and with the fan turned off, a dome hood will show itself better, capable of drawing in more fumes even in a passive state in the absence of a check valve compared to an inclined one.

Now about the advantages of an inclined hood. The first plus of such a hood, I would give for a stylish and modern design. Definitely, this hood looks very stylish and can serve as a decoration for any kitchen. Some manufacturers of inclined hoods have gone even further, and have developed a function where, when the hood is turned on, the air intake automatically rises, thereby increasing the air capture area, effectively and usefully. Metal and glass looks beautiful, and there's nothing to say.

An inclined hood, compared to a domed or built-in hood, precisely because of its shape, creates a certain lightness and elegance over the stove area, it seems to be there, but it doesn’t put pressure on you at all and this is definitely a plus.

Island - This type of hood is similar in design to a dome hood, the only difference is that such a hood is attached to the ceiling and has a finish on all sides. Also, for such hoods, the location of the control buttons can be on both sides, and some models do not provide for connection to ventilation and can only work in circulation mode.

So we got acquainted with the types, or in another way, with the design features of the hoods, but when choosing them, it is important to take into account another number of factors applicable to any of them.

Productivity - Power - air extraction into the ventilation duct or circulation?

Before purchasing a hood, it is necessary to clarify whether it is possible to connect the hood to the ventilation duct in your house, it happens that there is simply no such possibility, and the hood will have to be connected in circulation mode.

In the case of considering connecting the hood to the ventilation system of the room, no matter how much we talk about the performance of the hood itself, the first step is to start from the technical capabilities of the supply and exhaust ventilation of this room.

The power of the selected hood depends not only on desire, but also on a number of conditions dictated by the technical capabilities of the supply and exhaust ventilation in the house and the area of \u200b\u200bthe kitchen itself.

Yes, as stated in the recommendations of the standards, in 1 hour, the air in the kitchen should be updated 10-12 times, but this requires conditions.

In any store, they will help you calculate the required performance of the hood based on the volume of the kitchen. Where, for example, for a kitchen with an area of 10m2 with a ceiling height of 2.5m, we get a kitchen volume of 25m3, multiply it by the number of times the air is replaced in the room, this is 12 and do not forget to multiply by a minimum reserve factor of 1.3, and we get the required capacity of 390m3 per hour.

But, here we run into the fact that not every ventilation riser of an apartment building is designed for such a capacity, because for many, it is not more than 350 m3 per hour, ideally, and in fact even less.
An overly powerful hood connected to a small-diameter ventilation duct will not be able to work normally, which means that if you pay for excess power, you still cannot use it to the fullest.

Also, for the normal operation of the hood in the kitchen, it is necessary to provide ventilation to the room, you can read more about the supply ventilation and its importance from my other video, a link to which you will find in the description of this video.

Since most hoods can be connected both to the ventilation duct and operate in recirculation mode, you should decide which connection option is possible in your case.

The hood connected to the ventilation duct definitely has great advantages compared to working in the recirculation mode, because when the hood is working with a ventilation duct, all odors and heat are removed from the room, only a grease filter is used here, while when working, the hoods are in the recirculation mode, The air that has passed through the grease filter, before it returns back to the room, needs to be cleaned of smell and burning, for which another carbon filter is used, and this, whatever one may say, is a regular additional cost for consumables.

Noise from the hood and what affects it?

All hoods have their own noise level measured in decibels, a silent hood is a turned off hood, and everything else is a marketing trick, the more powerful the hood, the higher the noise. Also, it is worth paying attention to the factors that strongly affect the noise level during the operation of the hoods.

1.  An extractor hood operating in recirculation mode will make more noise compared to the same one where air is removed into the ventilation duct.
   
   
2. Powerful hood connected to a narrowed ventilation duct. If the hood itself has an outlet channel of 150 mm, then connecting it to a narrower channel, for example 120 or even worse 100 mm, will lead to the fact that the engine will have to overcome increased resistance to "push" air into the narrow channel, and therefore, noise from the working hood increases.
   
   
3. Connection to the ventilation duct with aluminum corrugation. Although almost all sold hoods are equipped with a flexible aluminum corrugation for connection to the ventilation duct, it is better to use special smooth air ducts, and preferably round ones. Thin corrugated aluminum, in addition to collecting dirt on its inner walls, has low noise insulation properties, can create extraneous sounds and unnecessary vibrations during fan operation.
   
   
4. The ventilation duct, which has a large horizontal length and frequent turns. From the ventilation riser to the hood, the distance should be as short as possible, the longer the horizontal section and the more angles and turns, the more difficult the fan will be to work.

Width and depth of kitchen hood

The width and depth of the kitchen hood depends on the dimensions of the hob. Warm air from the burners, steam and smoke rising from the bottom of the hob should get into the hood as much as possible, otherwise it will be of little use, the ceiling in the kitchen will quickly become covered with grease, and smells from the kitchen will penetrate into other rooms of the apartment.

Accordingly, if, for example, you have a wide five-burner gas stove or an electric surface, then the hood should match its width, and if the stove is small, then there is no point in a wide hood, and you can safely get by with the simplest option, for example, by installing a standard canopy hood. See also my other video for tips on choosing a gas surface.
But, it also happens that the seemingly appropriate width of the hood is not always comparable with its functionality.

When choosing a wide hood, it is more correct to pay attention not just to the width of the body or glass itself or to its performance, it is more correct to pay attention to the surface area of the grease filter.
Take, for example, a variant of a dome or, for example, an inclined hood that looks like it has a different width with absolutely the same size of the grease grate.


In such options, the manufacturer compensates for the increased width of the hood with the width of the glass located on the sides of it, and it is good if the fan power also increases proportionally depending on the width.

But, the effectiveness of such an extract is still in question, since it is not clear how air will be removed from it along the edges if the air intake is located only in the middle, and here it is much more correct to consider the principle, the wider the extract, the larger it should have a suction area .
With narrow hoods, everything is clear, they can have one or two grilles, the engine is located exactly above them, and there is actually nothing to catch, but with wide ones, you still need to pay attention to the fact that the air should be sucked in not only in the middle, but also around the edges.
In the dome version, this can be checked on a working hood, a sheet of paper should be attracted to the grease filter everywhere, in the middle and along the edges.

In the variant with an inclined hood, everything is much more complicated, here, if there is a working sample, if there is such an opportunity, you can check it with an incense stick, the smoke should be drawn both in the middle and along the edges.

Also, it is worth noting the option of hoods with a grease filter retractable forward, in some models it is even possible to turn on the hood when the visor is extended. Definitely the possibility of increasing the area of the grease filter increases the functionality of the hood.

Depending on the model and width of the hood, it can be equipped with 1,2 or 3 grease aluminum mesh filters. It is more convenient to find a replacement, care for and wash it with a smaller filter, therefore, it is better to choose a hood with several filters than with one large one.

Hood finishing material

Perhaps the main material from which kitchen hoods are made can be called stainless steel. This material does not absorb dirt, does not corrode, and is easy to clean with the right tools.
Often you can find hoods made of ordinary steel and covered with paint on top.

Such options are more prone to contamination, dirt can be absorbed into the paint, and in some cases the paint can lag behind the surface due to exposure to hot air and rising vapors.

Increasingly, there are combined options, especially inclined ones, in such models the fan case can be made of both stainless steel and painted steel, while the front part is often made of glass. Glass is definitely easy to clean, but in a situation with black, it will have to be done much more often.

Hood control

Remote Control

Some hoods can be equipped with a remote control, it is difficult to call this a big plus, in fact, here you just have to wipe more often not the control panel on the hood, but the remote control itself, which, by the way, without a special place will also be lost.

Lighting

It is worth noting that at the moment most kitchen hoods are equipped with lighting, the old halogen and simple light bulbs have been replaced by LED lights, they are brighter and last longer. But what exactly I would like to pay attention to is the location of the lamps. On some hoods, the lights are located on the back panel closer to the wall, respectively, some shine directly on the wall, and on some closer to the front, their light illuminates the center of the stove more evenly.

Control

Control can be divided into two types, mechanical with buttons that need to be pressed, and touch, there are no familiar buttons, only a glass panel with luminous icons, switching between hood modes works by touch.

Here, whoever likes it, the mechanics will cost less when buying and repairing, but it’s not always convenient, especially when hands are dirty, sensor technology is of course more expensive, it works clearly, even from wet and greasy hands, as well, one of the advantages of touch control is simplicity cleaning, just wipe the panel with a damp cloth and it is like new again.
Also, models with touch controls may have other additional functions. For example, the delayed shutdown function is very convenient, after cooking is completed, while steam is still rising from it, by turning on the delayed shutdown, you can leave the kitchen, and the hood will work for some time, and then turn off by itself and turn off its backlight.


Also, I would advise you to find out the exact dimensions of the fat aluminum mesh filter before buying, and look for analogues on the Internet. The presence of analogues will indicate that the filter sizes are standard and it will always be possible to purchase a new one, for example, after unsuccessful washing in unverified chemistry, which often happens to beginners.

The original article is located at this address - http://stroimasterskaya.ru/reviews/3300

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