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Cooker Hoods Buying Guide
Cooker hoods are the unsung heroes of your kitchen appliances, and you should really put some thought into them before you buy. Grease from cooking can be a real pain to scrub away, especially if it gets onto difficult-to-reach places like the ceiling, so here is a guide to what you should look out for and how to ensure a sufficiently powered hood.
All cooker hoods can be split into 5 main types: Integrated, Chimney, Island, Ceiling and downdraft.
Integrated Cooker Hoods
The term integrated is used to describe appliances that are fitted into your kitchen cabinets. In the case of hoods, there are two main options:
1. Fully Integrated
These fit into a cabinet above the hob and have a door or panel(to match the kitchen unit doors). Usually, you pull it open to reveal the hood filters to extract air while cooking, and then it neatly slots back into place when finished. This Luxair 60cm extractor is an excellent hood, with very high extraction.
2. Canopy
These are installed into the bottom of a cabinet above the hob. They are on show all the time, but can have various profiles, some being completely flat like these canopy hoods, or some with part of the body on display like these.
Chimney Cooker Hoods
By far the most popular and widespread type of cooker hood. These attach to the wall and have a panel covering the ducting into the wall or behind the top of the wall units. There are many styles and finishes available, such as standard triangle pyramid designs, flat panel designs and multiple glass options.
Island Cooker Hoods
If your hob is in the middle of the kitchen on an island. Then you will need a chimney attached to the ceiling and finished on all sides. There are many good options for island hoods, although ducting can be an issue as you have to run the ducting behind your ceiling. Island hoods cost more than the basic wall hoods as they have to look great from every angle. Again, there are several designer options you can go for, and this is often more of a consideration than for the wall-mounted versions, as it may very well be the centrepiece of your kitchen. Remember not to go for style over substance, as quite often something that looks great or funky may not have the biggest motor inside.
Ceiling Cooker Hoods
These are becoming increasingly popular, as the extraction rates are high, and as the distance away from your head is extended, they seem to run much quieter than the sound levels stated. 60dB next to your head while cooking is very different to 60dB on the ceiling. Most ceiling hoods are ducted out, and although you can actually recirculate if you duct back into the room and add a charcoal filter, ducting is the best option.
Downdraft Cooker Hoods
Relatively recent in the extraction market, downdraft hoods are another alternative. Here, you have the motor installed in the cabinet, and the hood pulls up from the worktop. While it’s a tidy solution, installing ducting can be a challenge. So most downdraft hood installations recirculate back into the room. Opinions are mixed so far on these. They offer very impressive extraction rates, but the additional expense means that, so far, they haven’t been widely taken up.
Ducted or Recirculating?
There is a simple mantra with installing cooking hoods: ‘if you can duct, always duct’. All cooker hoods run more efficiently and quietly when ducted outside. However, it isn’t always possible, so recirculation may be your only alternative. When recirculating, you place an additional filter made out of charcoal in the cooker hood to remove grease and impurities, but mainly odours which would otherwise circulate back into the room. The chemical properties of the carbon in the filters mean that other particles readily attract and attach to them, but there is a finite absorbability, so you do need to replace them. Costs of replacements can be anything from 10 to 40 pounds. The continued efficient running costs of a recirculating hood may well be greater than the cost of installing ducting in the first place.
All hoods need grease filters cleaned. Look for ones that are dishwasher safe. Then, you can simply pop them into your dishwasher and then back into the hood.
What extraction rate do I need?
For normal usage, say a couple of bubbling pans, a rate of 10 air changes per hour will be sufficient. So we need a motor capable of changing the volume of the air in your kitchen completely 10 times in 1 hour.
First, work out the volume of your kitchen. Multiply the length, width and height (all in metres) together to get the cubed volume(m³). Then multiply that number by the number of air changes (we decided on 10) to get the extraction rate required. Heavy usage, you could maybe work out 12 air changes, or light usage, 6 or 7. Cabinets and furniture also skew the volume as they take up air space.
Example.
Your kitchen is 2.4m high and 4m x 5m in size.
2.4 x 4 x 5 = 48
Then multiply that by the 10 changes per hour
48 x 10 = 480
So you are looking for an extraction rate of 480m³ for medium usage.
It is recommended that you choose a hood that achieves that on a mid setting, so it will run quieter during standard use, and you can use a higher setting on the occasions you are using all the rings at once.