How to choose a cooker hood

Recommendation points

• History of cooker hoods
• Purpose and device of a kitchen hood
• How to choose a hood for the kitchen

In this Article: A Pedigree of Kitchen Hoods how the cooker hood works; two operating modes – recirculation and flow; types and equipment of household hoods; price segments and manufacturers of kitchen hoods; correct lighting of the hob.

Any house or apartment has a highly specialized room – a kitchen for preparing food and, often, for receiving it. And cooking is accompanied by significant evaporation of moisture, smoke and odors that spread throughout all rooms through the openings of interior doors and the gaps between the doors and jambs. Frankly speaking, the atmosphere of kitchen aromas and steam does not contribute to the good mood of the household – in the warm season, of course, you can open the windows and ventilate the house, but what about in winter? The solution to the problem of maintaining the climate in the house at the proper level is simple – a kitchen hood.

History of cooker hoods

The problem with the products of combustion of the hearth, water vapor and smells of food accompanied the homes of our ancestors for thousands of years. The profession of a cook has been unhealthy for hundreds of years, since the atmosphere of kitchens was constantly saturated with carcinogens and carbon dioxide, streaks of soot and grease were on its walls, ceiling and furniture, giving the room an ominous look – it is not for nothing that in fairy tales the kitchen is especially revered by witches of varying degrees of maliciousness.

In an attempt to tackle the kitchen problem, some homeowners made the ceiling and roof domed, and a hole was made at the top of the roof to create a kind of natural ceiling-sized hood. Others took the kitchen out of the general structure of the residential building or made a separate entrance into it from the street, removing it as far as possible from the windows of the living quarters, and the wall between the kitchen and the rest of the rooms served as a barrier against the penetration of odors and combustion products from the hearth.

The first semblance of hoods was installed in medieval royal castles – a system of holes in the walls of the palace kitchens located at different levels created drafts and made it possible to effectively remove the combustion products from the hearths. She had only one drawback – in winter in such kitchens it was very cold, despite the heat from constantly melted hearth.

The first full-fledged hoods appeared in the last century, primarily in the kitchens of catering establishments. With the gradual increase in demand for hoods for the residential sector, Western manufacturing companies have developed models for “home” use. In the USSR, hoods of impressive size and nondescript appearance were installed only at catering establishments, they were not in multi-storey private houses – there were only duct systems of natural ventilation, carried out through a hole in the kitchen wall taken away by a grill, next to the place where the stove was installed.

Purpose and device of a kitchen hood

This household appliance is designed for forced ventilation and air purification in the kitchen, removing combustion products and smoke from its volume, as well as any vapors and odors that accompany food preparation..

The design of the cooker hood includes an external casing, ventilation units, grease and odor filters, an electronic or mechanical control panel. According to the principle of air purification, they are divided into recirculating and flowing ones: in the first type of hoods, the air passes through the trap filters and then returns back to the kitchen; the principle of operation of the second type is simpler – polluted air is cleaned in an oil-grease filter and is removed through the ventilation duct to which the flow hood is connected.

Hood types

Recirculating hoods are equipped with two filters of two types – the first is designed to eliminate odors, the second is used to trap oil particles, grease and soot. Oil-and-fat filters can be disposable and reusable, the first of them are made from non-woven or synthetic winterizer fixed on a plastic cassette and replaced with new hoods during operation, the latter are made of steel or aluminum, they must be periodically cleaned of accumulated dirt. Charcoal filters must be replaced with new ones as they become dirty, they are disposable. By the way, most models of flow hoods allow them to be used in air recirculation mode, but in this case you will need to equip them with a charcoal filter..

Have you noticed that the design of flow-through kitchen hoods includes an oil-grease filter and you wonder why you need it, because the air will still be removed outside the kitchen? Indeed, you can do without a filter, but in this case, fat and oil particles will be deposited on the fan blades, on the inner walls of the hood dome and in the air duct, and it will be extremely difficult to eliminate these deposits..

According to the place of installation and design, there are suspended, dome, built-in, island and hoods equipped with a pull-out panel. Suspended kitchen hoods are widespread due to their low cost and easy installation; they work only in recirculation mode, cleaning the air streams rising above the stove from contamination using replaceable filters. Dome (fireplace) models have the shape of an umbrella and are connected to the duct of flow ventilation, can operate in flow and recirculation modes. Built-in kitchen hoods are used if the stove is not installed independently, but is built into the kitchen furniture, i.e. they are built into a suspended kitchen cabinet with a control panel output to its front side. Island hoods are called models of hoods designed for stoves installed in the center of the kitchen – they work mainly in flow ventilation mode. A pull-out panel allows you to significantly reduce the dimensions of the hood, while maintaining a complete overlap of the surface of the stove – a panel with a built-in filter moves out above the stove before cooking and slides back into the hood body after cooking.

The cooker hood is equipped with one or two electric fans, the power of which determines its performance. On average, the productivity of household kitchen hood models presented on the domestic market is 180-700 m³/ h The volume of air passed through the hood per unit of time depends on the fan speed. Depending on the model and manufacturer, the panels for household hoods allow the user to choose the operating mode among the existing 2 or 4 speeds.

Kitchen hood models are equipped with touch, slide and button control panels located on the front of the hood. The touch control panel allows you to control the household hood by touching the sectors indicated on it with your finger, which is responsible for certain functions, after touching the LED lights up. Slider (slider) control is carried out by moving the mechanical slider, the current position of which sets the operating mode. With push-button control, everything is simple – pressing the buttons activates one or another mode of operation of the cooker hood. In addition to manual control, some models are equipped with a timer to turn off power to the hood after a specified period of time, an electronic speed switch that independently increases the operating speed when the smoke concentration increases, and an ultrasonic sensor that turns on the hood when the moisture content in the kitchen atmosphere is high.

The hood of the hood hanging over the stove seriously interferes with the ceiling lighting, therefore, on the side facing the surface of the stove, these household appliances are equipped with their own lamps.

How to choose a hood for the kitchen

Consider the main criteria for choosing a kitchen hood – performance, dimensions and price.

The required performance, i.e. the volume of air passing through the hood per hour is calculated based on the size of the kitchen. Sanitary regulations require that the volume of air in the kitchen is completely replaced 10 to 12 times in one hour. Thus, to calculate the optimal performance of the hood, you need to calculate the internal volume of the kitchen room, subtract the volume of kitchen furniture from it (for an ideal calculation) and multiply it by 10-12. For example, if the kitchen area is 5.6 m², and the height of the walls is 2.7 m, then an exhaust hood with a capacity of 155-180 m is sufficient for such a room³/ h However, this calculation is correct only under the condition that the distance from the hood to the surface of the plate is in the range from 650 to 850 mm, i.e. if this distance is longer for some reason, then a more powerful kitchen hood will be required.

The dimensions of the exhaust hood should not be less than the surface of the stove – it would be better to be larger, which will ensure that polluted air does not leak into other rooms. The width of standard models of hobs is 600 or 900 mm, so household hoods for a kitchen of this width are in great demand. Let’s go back to the height of the hood hood in relation to the hob surface – the minimum distance from the bottom of the hood to the burners should be at least 650 mm for electric stoves and 750 mm for gas stoves. Shorter distances will cause the hood to overheat and may even ignite fat deposits accumulated on its inner surfaces..

Hoods for the kitchen are presented on the Russian market, according to their cost, they are divided into economy, medium and premium classes. Cheap models made of plastic and metal produced by Jet air, Faber, Krona steel and Elica (Italy), Fagor and Teka (Spain), Hansa (Germany), Cata “And” Techno “(China), as well as the domestic manufacturer” Elikor “, have a minimum of necessary functions – simple design, slider control or push-button control, average productivity 450 m³/ h, two or three speeds, lighting is done with two incandescent lamps. The cost of recirculation hoods in this price segment ranges from 1,500 to 3,000 rubles, flow hoods will cost more – about 5,500 rubles.

The performance of middle class hoods is higher – about 650 m³/ h, stainless steel, tempered glass and aluminum are used in their design, giving the models an attractive appearance and high operational reliability. The control is carried out by buttons, a slider or sensors, the control panel is equipped with a digital display, incandescent or halogen lamps are built into the hoods to illuminate the stove. Hoods of the middle price range – from 5000 to 13000 rubles. – on the domestic market are represented by the companies “Nardi” and “Elica” (Italy), “Kaiser” and “Waler” (Germany), “Zigmund & Shtain “(China), in the line of models of the Russian” Elikor “there are also hoods of this class.

Premium-class hoods have the highest performance (about 1300 m³/ h), have an exquisite design, often finished with valuable wood species. In addition to the touch control panel and the remote control, these models are equipped with an automatic shutdown timer, filter clogging indicators, temperature, smoke and humidity sensors, which activate the operation of the hood when a flow of hot air from the stove, smoke and water vapor is detected, respectively. The hob is illuminated by halogen lamps. On the Russian market, premium-class hoods are represented by the companies Gorenje (Slovenia), Whirlpool (Italy), Neff (Germany), Electrolux (Sweden), Blomberg (Turkey), the cost of models in this price segment is from 14,000 to 30,000 rubles.

Separately, it is worth noting the nuances with the lighting of the hob. Habitual incandescent lamps give yellow (warm) light, but they somewhat distort the colors of red, yellow and blue shades, the light of fluorescent lamps significantly changes the color of the dishes being prepared, so it is better not to use them. The best source of illumination of the hob surface will be halogen lamps, however, they have a rather high cost – their light does not affect the color of dishes, at the same time these lamps will last a long time.