Do I really need a range hood? – YES!

Kitchen range hoods provide a vital function for the safety of your home as well as the indoor air quality. A range hood serves two basic but vital functions. The first is to prevent any flare-ups from the cooking surface from burning or damaging your cabinets.

The second function is to remove unwanted and potentially dangerous contaminants from the home such as smoke, grease, steam and odors. If you stop and think about it, the kitchen is one of the main sources of indoor air pollution. All of your heating (furnace, water heater, etc.) equipment has chimneys that take the pollutants outside of the home. When you are cooking (especially with gas appliances) you are generating a lot of pollutants. If you do not have or are not using a range hood, those pollutants are going right into the air you are breathing. As the saying goes, the kitchen is the heart of the home, so you want to keep the air in it as clean as possible. Think about the last time you maybe kept dinner on the burner a little too long and as you looked across the kitchen, you noticed a nice haze of smoke building up – be honest, it has happened to most of us. Now think about what you are actually breathing in at that point. If you had a properly sized and vented range hood operating, you might not have reached that point or at very least it would be vented out of the home much quicker.

The choices in range hoods have come a long way with traditional, contemporary, and professional styles to accent any décor. Air King also offers the largest selection of ENERGY STAR® certified range hoods on the market today. To learn more visit www.airkinglimited.com

To duct or not to duct – what type of range hood should I purchase?

While there are hundreds of different styles, forms and features to choose from when it comes to a kitchen range hood, there are basically two types – ducted or ductless (recirculating).

A ducted range hood will exhaust the air through a grease filter then to the outside of the home through ductwork attached to the range hood. A ductless range hood will pass the air through a grease and odor filter inside the hood and recirculate the air back into the room. Now, which is better? Without a doubt a ducted range hood is far superior to a ductless one. Ducted range hoods will completely remove the contaminated air from the home and provide much better indoor air quality.

So why would anyone use a ductless range hood. There are two reasons why. The first reason is in certain applications running ductwork to the outside is just not logistically possible. This is especially true in large apartment/condo complexes. In these situations having a ductless range hood is better than not utilizing anything.

The second reason is not as good of one. Installing ductwork in a home is an added cost, so unfortunately if the builder or home owner is trying to cut costs a bit, they will not take the extra step to run the ductwork. The good news is that if this was the case, ductwork can be added fairly simply if you have attic access. Easy ways to tell if you have ducting or not are to first open the cabinets above your hood. If you see ductwork, you have a ducted range hood. The other way to tell is to turn your range hood on and feel if any air is blowing back into the kitchen. If it is, you have a ductless range hood.

If you have a ductless range hood and are able to run ducting to the outside, we would highly recommend doing so. While this might be a project a handy homeowner can accomplish we do caution that you will be cutting a hole to the exterior of your home. If not done and sealed properly, this could lead to water leaking into the home and causing damage. 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 hood visit www.airkinglimited.com