We have a low attic. Neither of us is up to shinnying up through the access in the top of a closet and ploughing through the insulation and dust to cut a hole in the kitchen ceiling. We have a fan up there, which doesn’t do much of a job.
And broiling requires good ventilation. I managed to half kill myself. Note to self: cumin when incinerated produces a nasty smoke that kills your eyes. And the smoke kept coming.
That did it. I swore no more grilling until it’s warm enough outside to fire up the outdoor barbecue.
But now and again you just need ventilation in the kitchen. We thought of getting a screen door for the mud room outer door, but doors with screen doors need to open one inward, one out, and the floor of the mudroom has a slope that means the door would have to be jacked up with a nasty catch-you type sill.
We thought of getting one for the inner door, the actual kitchen door. But screen doors don’t come in interior-door sizes, unless you custom, which is spendy to the max.
Soooo…wall fan. We have space above the kitchen door to the mudroom. A trip to Lowes located a relatively inexpensive room-to-room fan kit that will go above the door (it’s 13 inches and we have 13 3/4 inches above that door) and blast air out into the mudroom, and on outside if we open the back door. No kitteh-escapes, and fast air exchange. A nice solution for the ventilation problem, an easy DIY (we cut the hole, watch out for the wiring, remove (probably) one short stud which won’t be load-bearing, possibly reinforce the opening by moving the stud or adding an L-brace—replace the box under the lightswitch beside the door with a duplex box, add a switch and wire going up to the fan—likely have to bore a hole in one short stud above the door to get the wire through, then fit the fan in, put the plate on the new switches, put the fan grille on both sides, and viola! Ventilation!
The Lowe’s department on these things is good: their display gives you the chance to hear a motor at 4 sonnes, at 3, and at 2. (Noise level). And this moves a lot of air, while being a bit noisy, but then, you don’t have it on except at need.
Anybody’s who’s got an airflow problem between two rooms, you have to ask about room-to-room units: they don’t have them displayed. But they exist, and are some under 50$. Great solution for a dead-end room.
(Putting on my carpenter’s hat and apron)
I strongly recommend that you rethink the wall fan and install a real hood vented to the outside. First, venting to another room will greasify the other room real fast.
You should install a real hood vented to the outside. Venting through a wall is perfectly OK. Your duct size should be 6″ or bigger. Hoods are readily available on craigslist at a fraction of retail. People remodel and sell them or stores sell showroom units. I bought a 36″ Wolf hood that retailed for $1800 for $400 that had been a showroom unit. I would be happy to advise you via email or phone.
Phil Brown
We have a hood, but it’s interiorly fanned—ie, it doesn’t go anywhere, just kind of absorbs the steam. Unfortunately we have a small galley-style kitchen (4 cabinets up, 3 down), with 3-4′ between sides (you can’t simultaneously open the dishwasher or the fridge and have anybody get past you), and we’d have to sacrifice the cabinets above the range, then get through the attic and into the roof, so a couple of thousand dollars for work we can’t do (I’m not on the roof with a Skillsaw, not even forty years ago) and it would mean the loss of a solid maple cabinet, alas. Those George-Jetson style solid maple cabinets are the kitchen’s only distinction, at the moment, and I hate to give up any of them. As is, the other room is only 10×6, sort of a hallway in which we keep gardening stuff, muddy boots, wet skates, koi food, and our rain gear—with a usually vigorous breeze off the garden.
So I wish we could afford to have the real hood (the fake one actually helps)but I really don’t want to give up one of our 4 topside cabinets: sigh. The pipe would pretty well take up the whole cabinet and leave us still fighting to get it through the roof. This is a 1950’s kitchen, and it has some sort of vent above the range, in front of the cabinet, so we could S-curve a conduit to that opening, but that would require re-framing and drywall and refinishing, and I’d still lose the cabinet because the housing for the hose would be in front of it. The fake hood handles ordinary cooking. It’s just if something burns or you’ve been cooking fish (which we do often), it’s a pita to get the smoke or the fishiness out.
During the summer I have the outside grill option.
Wish we could, and thank you for the offer!
I had a similar experience, but I was trying to make Szechuan pepper oil. I had the heat turned up too high and the next thing I knew, I had pepper gas permeating the house. I had unwittingly created a chemical munition – a horrible experience for the eyes and the lungs.
Once I got the smoke cleared out, I had all this pepper oil in the pan. I got an empty jar and poured the oil in. The bottom of the jar shattered, so I had hot pepper oil all over the counter mixed with broken glass.
I’m never trying THAT again!
I would second Phil’s comment – If you’re going to do serious high-temperature cooking, get yourself a real hood. Then make some steak au poivre. Yum!
Think I’ll do that recipe in the summer in the garden—even WITH a fan! 😉
I had much the same problem with venting the kitchen until I had a fan installed when I reshingled my roof two years ago. The vent from the living space is in the kitchen area. Originally it was to get accumulated heat out of the house, but it also works very well as a vent fan for the kitchen. I suppose when I get a new stove I will have to get a real vent. I think I have seen down vents that install beside a stove….have no idea how well they work.
More rain today, but one bridge is open so we have another way off the hill……..our post office was badly flooded…..so we have to drive and extra 6 miles to pick up mail……country living is FUN! 😉
Not on topic, but I couldn’t resist – Le Duo des Chats.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x6XPBPjhg40
😆
Very fun!
Our new (eventual) kitchen will have windows on 2 of the 4 walls, a screen door on the third, and a galley passthrough on the 4th over the sink, so there will be plenty of ventilation. It will have to be done in stages, however, as money accumulates slowly. I’m still debating with Home Depot over a washer-dryer set that were supposed to be on sale last month, but weren’t actually in-store, and Lowe’s over some specialty cement products.
After some of my early experiments in setting fire to things while cooking I feel that every kitchen needs three things. A gas mask, a fire blanket and the list of somewhere the delivers while the smoke clears.
I’ve had evenings like that!
Jane’s declared the charred chicken delicious; Ysabel agrees.
I ain’t touching it!
Couldn’t the wall fan go through the wall above the kitchen window, straight to the outside, instead of above the door to the mudroom? Or is there no room above that, or another cabinet?
I’ve seen such fans mounted in windows, but not if it’s double glazed.
Though venting to the outdoors might make the kitchen colder in winter: that could be an added benefit of venting to the mudroom.
Off topic: could you please remove my way-too-long comment from the S&S-project page? It seems to have killed the discussion instead of triggering more reactions, and that certainly wasn’t my intention.
No space above the window. And the other two windows are fixed windows, double-glazed and do not raise. We thought about replacing one of those, but then we’d have to replace the other, or they wouldn’t match, and they’re not standard size. Custom, again.
Sure: I’ll fix that.
I’m trying to visualize your kitchen, and having a rough time. One wall of the kitchen is the galley cabinets, with stove, and the other side is windows, perhaps with sink and work area?
What part of the two fixed-pane windows would be tricky to match? Maybe you could replace one by installing the fan on the top half through a solid panel, and replace the bottom half with a custom smaller matching window? Hopefully that would be less expensive, and you wouldn’t sacrifice too much view or light.
No, it’s a fairly large kitchen, but the large part is the dining area and pantry where the windows are: 5×3 sideways and framed into brick exterior. The actual kitchen-kitchen is about 7-10′ long, depending on whether you’re measuring the far wall or the nearer one from the bent entry, has about 3′ aisle for work space between the 2 banks of cabinets and appliances. The cabinets are tall, and have about an 8″ furdown above them, which probably carries house cable: we use it for display of 6″ plates. If the fridge door is open nobody can pass. If the dishwater door is down, one person can pass carefully. The range is staggered off on the opposite side from the dishwasher, or we wouldn’t be able to open both doors at once. If you should, you’d have to maneuver in a figure S. The only window that opens, sort of, is over the sink between two cabinets, and it’s got a storm window; but it’s a wooden frame, and it takes graphite and considerable effort to get it open more than 4″. There are cabinets along the 10′ wall, 2 of them above, 2 below, but one is about 15″ wide. The dishwasher took out the rest of it.
On the range-side wall, shorter, first there’s the fridge, then two “up” cabinets, over one “down” cabinet, and the range, so the “up” cabinet that’s over the range is a skinny one, and shallow, with a true vent outside it, in the kitchen ceiling, that doesn’t draw worth a damn. That’s the one that would be sacrificed if I were to duct and wire a true vent. Now, one option would be to pull that fan and get a stronger one, but I’m scared to know what would come down if I were to pull it: I don’t know whether it’s got a duct up there or not, and at my age—and being 5’7″ and solidly built—I’m not anxious to get into the coat closet and attempt to bend a right angle to get into the very tiny attic. I envision the fire department being called to get me down.
Beyond the galley-area (and a ship’s galley is a good image) is the dining area they built onto the kitchen, with 2 windows, as aforesaid, and a fair bit of room, the size of a single garage (it once was) with a small pantry and a mudroom and part of Jane’s bedroom nicked out of it. The house roof is an elongate pyramid directly set onto the brickwork, and you couldn’t possibly stand up in the attic. So there aren’t too many options that don’t involve either cutting into the roof or the brick—or venting to the mudroom.
If you can get into the attic-nasty and difficult from the description but you only have to do it once-you can go out sideways through a gable end, not through the roof. I’d really recommend you do almost anything to avoid venting into another room.
Phil Brown
Well, we have no gables on this roof: it’s sort of an elongated pyramid—which stood us in good stead when we got 5′ of snow on it last winter. But I am appreciating the advice.
What are people’s thoughts on the built-in microwaves with non-venting hoods under them? My stand-alone microwave is dying, and I am really short on counter space, so I am thinking of replacing my current hood with one. But I am always a little concerned about only having a non-vented fan.
Safe enough—safer, actually, than a vented hood if you have a grease fire: fire getting sucked into your attic is scary. However, as Otherwestcoast says below, no help against any frying, broiling, or fishy aromas.
For microwaves—we have one that’s 11 years old, and I wouldn’t trade it for anything. It’s a Panasonic, is a carousel, and it has a “Sensor reheat” function that takes all the brainwork out of warming up leftovers. Put leftovers into the oven, punch that button, and it starts working. It’s got a sensor that detects steam from the dish in question, and once it detects steam it continues for a mathematically-calculated time based on how long it’s taken it to get to this point. In a decade, it’s been infallible, on every kind of dish. No cold centers or burned edges. Just perfect. They have that technology still: they just call it ‘sensor’ and encourage you to use it on regular cooking as well as reheating, which I’d not thought of, but there’s no reason it shouldn’t work–doh!—Anyway, get a Panasonic with the Sensor feature. I wouldn’t be satisfied with anything else.
@philospher77… We have one of those non-vented cooker fans that just re-circulates the air through a wire mesh to trap (some of) the grease and I hate it. As CJ said, if you are frying at a high temperature or cooking fish it does nothing to remove the smoke and/or smell. If you don’t stir fry, sear meat at high temps or cook fish regularly you should be fine with a non-venting fan, otherwise I can’t recommend one like the one we have! Sorry about the small rant, but it is the one thing I really would like to fix in our house, as I do all of the above on a regular basis and with an open plan kitchen/living room the whole house suffers.
Two different friends with built-in microwaves have sworn off them forever. 1.) a pita to replace when they go 2.) the microwaves do not seem to work as well as stand alones 3.) the vent fans are REALLY LOUD and as otherwestcoast wrote they don’t work very well. 😉
I’ve a built-in microwave and it’s been broken for at least 5 years, if not more. We’re still using my 35 year-old standalone Tappan which we had when we moved into this house. The built-in makes a very good bread bin.
Hmm… maybe I will consider a smaller stand-alone, then. The problem that I am running into is that I really only have one stretch of countertop, about 8 foot long, with a double sink in it, and when you put a microwave on that, it eats up about a quarter of it. That doesn’t leave much space for prepping food.
I’ve got a chopping block which fits over half of my double sink. It’s become an essential part of the kitchen.
If you built a bolt-on U-shaped wooden garage for your microwave, you could suspend it, and change it out easily if it broke. The problem with the built ins is that finding one that exactly fits the opening is not easy, over the passage of time. But if you get a stand-alone and suspend it, you can change that arrangement easily if you have to. Many of the built-ins don’t have anything on their sides, just a front cover, so you have to fit exactly. When my mum’s broke, even on a house only 5 years old, they couldn’t replace it with anything that fit the opening.
Both my brothers have their microwaves on brackets under their cabinets……slightly different configurations but both look very professional. I think you can buy mounting kits at Lowe’s and Home Depot. My microwave is fifteen years old and still going strong. The built-ins seem to go after about five years….again family experience.