Choose a smooth (and round) tube as opposed to a flexible one. The latter gives more resistance when the air passes through, which diminishes the actual airflow and increases the noise. Furthermore, the flexible tube is often thinner, resulting in greater heat loss and an increased risk of condensation. Drops of water from the hood might be the result, especially if there is no return valve mounted on the outside wall in order to prevent cool air from entering the duct system.Consider insulating your duct in order to minimize condensation and noise. If you are acquiring a wall mounted cooker hood, you could also consider attenuating the noise by adding insulation around the chimney. You could also consider the relatively simple solution of simply building a chimney cover in plasterboard to be painted in your kitchen’s colors.
You cannot cook without a cooker hood: the extractor hood gets rid of the odors, steam and smoke when you cook, but make it work efficiently, you need to mount it correctly with the best possible ducting. Read our advice right here on how to get the tubing right when installing your new cooker hood.
( Installing re-circulation hood is rid off this question)
If you prefer to extract the filthy air out of your kitchen, an extraction cooker hood is the right choice for you. Where to place the hood and how to install the duct system thus becomes the key question.
5 TIPS ON HOW TO MOUNT THE TUBING FOR YOUR EXTRACTOR FAN
Aim for a short exhaust duct. In order to preserve the extraction capacity of your hood, install your stove and thus your hood close to where you will make the required hole in the wall. To put it simply, for every extra metre of duct, the hood loses approximately 25m3 of extraction capacity.
Avoid bends and angles in duct work (again) with the purpose of preserving a maximum extraction capacity. A 90 degrees bend has the same negative impact on the airflow as one metre of extra ducting!
Choose a smooth (and round) tube as opposed to a flexible one. The latter gives more resistance when the air passes through, which diminishes the actual airflow and increases the noise. Furthermore, the flexible tube is often thinner, resulting in greater heat loss and an increased risk of condensation. Drops of water from the hood might be the result, especially if there is no return valve mounted on the outside wall in order to prevent cool air from entering the duct system.
Opt for a wide exhaust duct. An optimum airflow performance is assured by a wide enough diameter, which also keeps the noise at a low level.
Consider insulating your duct in order to minimize condensation and noise. If you are acquiring a wall mounted cooker hood, you could also consider attenuating the noise by adding insulation around the chimney. You could also consider the relatively simple solution of simply building a chimney cover in plasterboard to be painted in your kitchen’s colors.
4 - Width: Your hood should be wider than your stove. As a general rule, we recommend a hood is 1.5 x the width of the cooking area. A free-hanging hood over an island should be twice as wide as the induction hob.
5 - Height: Always respect the manufacturer’s recommended minimum. Ensure you mount your hood sufficiently high. Allowing plenty of head room while you cook avoids any potential discomfort to your neck or your back.
6 - Lights: LED light sources are the best solution. Try to assess whether the hood’s lights are angled correctly for you, otherwise you risk being dazzled.
7 - Cleaning: Filters need to be easily accessible. Grease should have as few places as possible to gather, both inside and outside the hood. Brushed stainless steel is attractive but greasy finger marks do show up more easily. Similarly, dust is more visible on a glass canopy than on an opaque one.
8 - Features: A delay button with an automatic stop function is useful. A filter alarm is highly desirable.
The two major hood categories are design hoods that are clearly visible versus integrated hoods meant to be more or less invisible.
Ceiling hoods and down draft hoods represent a mix of the two: invisible + design! Be aware that as attractive they may be, your expectations regarding their performance as hoods should be lowered. See below:
Wall mounted hoods
Vertical wall hoods
Island hoods
Built-in conventional hoods
Canopy hoods
Telescopic pull-out hoods
Ceiling hoods
Downdraft hoods
When buying a new cooker hood there are 9 fundamentals you need to consider.
Let’s be clear: Go for extraction! This is the most long-lasting and efficient solution.
A cooker hood to be used in re-circulation mode is altogether noisier. With the appliance you rarely receive technical data measured in re-circulation mode (the data is almost always measured in extraction mode only). And maintenance costs are high.
A re-circulation hood simply filters the air through a metal filter and a sort of charcoal filter, and no external vent is needed. However:
· The filter will capture some of the grease but the rest will stay in your kitchen.
· The carbon filter will partially remove odors for a short time but will then need to be cleaned or replaced.
· A hood that simply recirculates the air is unable to deal with the moist air created by your cooking.
In the interests of saving energy, cooker hoods may now extract a maximum of 650 m3/h at full power. This is the legal limit. Manufacturers may add a more powerful boost function but it may only be activated for a few minutes, during which it extracts up to an additional 100 m3 of air.
For a less pricey model destined for a smaller kitchen, this rule of thumb gives you “minimum extraction requirements in m3/h”: calculate the volume of your kitchen and multiply it by at least ten (i.e. the length in meters x the width in meters x the height in meters x 10).
Remember that diameter and length of the tubing, and the number of 90o corners around which the air has to pass, are key factors that influence extraction efficiency. We recommend using 150mm-diameter tubing and keeping it as short and straight as possible.
Cooker hoods judged to be ‘silent’ emit as little as 30 dB(A) on ‘minimum’ power and 55 dB(A) on maximum. As a point of reference, the decibel level of normal speech is 60-65 dB. The noisiest cooker hoods emit 70 dB SPL or more.
To obtain a meaningful noise level comparison for two cooker hoods, you first need to ensure that both have more or less identical minimum and maximum air extraction capacities.
Depending on the interpretation method used, an increase of 3-6 dB will double the perceived noise level. By doubling the distance (1-2-4-8…. meters) from the noise source you halve the perceived noise level. Good to know when deciding where to position your dining table.
Noise levels of hoods are always measured at a point 1.3 meters from the centre of the hood. The recently updated IEC standards define this precisely and all manufacturers use this method.