Does your range hood perform as well as it should

Here are a few of the typical issues that consumes encounter with their range hoods and a brief look at why these issues may exist:

Problem = NOISY RANGE HOOD
Result = You don't use the range hood and the grease, vapors are spreading through your home

• The ducting is restricted
• This could be as a result of a back draft damper flap that is jammed in place creating back pressure on the blower - like all things in nature the blower responds and pushes back by increasing its effort
• The ducting is to small for the range hood blower
• Same situation as above - the rangehood blower works harder to get push the air out
• Filters are blocked - usually the case with mesh filters where the grease has congealed and the air cannot pass through easily
• Clean the venthood filters - if they are dishwasher safe - dishwasher otherwise by hand with a powerful detergent
• A cheap motor - as with most things in this world there are varying degrees of quality and a badly balanced and cheaply built range hood blower will make a great deal of mechanical noise

Problem =SMOKE AND COOKING FUMES ARE NOT BEING SUCKED IN BY THE RANGE HOOD
Result = Grease, vapors and odors spread through your home

• Blocked filters as above - this very rarely happens with baffle filters, it mostly happens with mesh filters
• Clean the filters
• The range hood blower system is under powered relative to the stove or range - in ventilation terms it is not drawing sufficient cfm(cubic feet per minute of air) to handle the volume of smoke or vapor being created by the range - very often happens over ranges with bbq's or griddles.
• Not much you can do except change the range hood blower - this has other implications - is the range hood ducting large enough to cope with the increased cfm - there is a correlation between cfm and range hood duct size - see other posts on this blog
• The capture area formed by the range hood does not cover the burners - when hot vapor rises it expands outwards like a funnel - if the range hood doesnt at least cover the burners you will have this problem
• Not much you can do again except a mjor reno and replace the range hood so that it covers the burners.
• A case in point - we were called to a consumers house who had a 48" wide by 27" deep wolf range with bbq - the client loved to bbq. However the hood above the range was only 14" deep - it was/is a beautiful 72" wide custom cabinet mantel hood. This was a big problem - not only are there no inserts on the market that are around 14" shallow by 48" wide there just is not the coverage - we came up with a solution for them - we bulit a custom 14" deep by 72" wide custom insert with baffle filters and only had baffle filters over the 48" space - we then added a 1000cfm external blower to the mix which creates a huge amount of negative air pressure through the filters - not a 100% solution but pretty close - most of the bbq work must be done at the back of the bbq. Picture doesn't show the whole story but there it is.

• Maybe you have a microwavehood - these typically suck in the air and then blow it back into the room - these are called re-circulating hoods - not much to say about these that is positive.

If you have any questions or live with these problems feel free to contact us - we provide advice and suggestions free of charge.