This is a Smoke Free Area – Ventilating your kitchen

It’s time to start cooking dinner. You think about what to make then prepare all the food to be cooked. You turn on the oven or cook top and start cooking. Here’s the question – did you think to turn your range hood on?

The kitchen can be one of the largest areas of indoor air pollution of the home. Think about it. When you cook you are generating smoke, gas fumes (if you have a gas range), putting grease into the air as well as all kinds of odors. That’s just if you cook everything correctly! We haven’t even added if something is burnt during the process. There are plenty of reasons as to why you don’t turn the range hood on – it’s too loud, I didn’t think to do it, all it does is put the smoke back into the room, etc. All of those reasons can be solved.

A properly functioning kitchen range hood can be a critical piece in maintaining Indoor Air Quality (IAQ). While the original function of a range hood was to protect the undersides of your cabinets from burning, they have evolved to be a vital piece of good ventilation. It is highly recommended (and in some areas of the country mandatory) that the range hood be vented to the outside of the home. This provides the best ventilation situation, taking all the contaminates generated during the cooking process and exhausting them completely out of the home. Some range hoods recirculate the air back into the room through a grease and odor filter. These are known as ductless range hoods. While they are better than not using a range hood at all, they are not ideal as they do not fully ventilate the area.

The most common excuse for not turning the range hood on is the amount of noise it makes. We agree that there are a lot of hoods out there that you feel you need to have earplugs on to use. There are also a lot of options that are considerably quieter. The sound is measured in Sones. As a comparison, 4 sones is about the sound of a normal conversation. Air King offers one of the largest selections of energy efficient, quiet operating range hoods on the market today with normal operating sound levels of around 1 sone. Having a new range hood installed can typically be done by a homeowner in an afternoon although there are many factors that can add to that time including if ducting needs to be replaced or new ductwork needs to be added.

Air King always recommends consulting a professional if you are unsure about any aspects of the installation. To learn more about Air King’s selection of kitchen range hoods, please visit us at www.airkinglimited.com.