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For many families, the kitchen is the heart of the home. Our Top Factors to Consider Before Buying Kitchen Chimney in 2024 will assist you in finding the best Kitchen Chimney (Range Hood) as per your requirements.
The kitchen is where family members prepare their meals socialize and eat together. Unfortunately, it also harbors high amounts of tar water vapor, food smells and harmful chemical compounds like aldehydes which can sometimes compromise your family’s health and that’s where the kitchen chimney comes in.
They work like a pair of lungs in the kitchen by either extracting the air directly outside or the air recirculating it back into the kitchen through an air filter.
Every serious cook knows the necessity of having a high-quality chimney in their kitchen. A high-quality kitchen chimney will remove the smoke, odor, heat and grease from the air in your kitchen so you and your family can breathe easier and you can cook in comfort but will all of the options available selecting the right kitchen chimney is not an easy task.
In this post, We will tell you what you need to consider when selecting your new chimney for your kitchen. This post is for an indoor kitchen chimney.
The kitchen chimney is very useful as below.
- To eliminate smoke.
- To eliminate steam.
- To eliminate heat.
- To remove odors.
- To prevent oil clogging and grease particles.
- To remove airborne droplets of grease from the air.
- To expel gases that are produced by combustion.
- To prevent the accumulation of grime in the kitchen.
How to select the best Chimney?
For that, you need to understand what kind of chimney is suitable for you, there are many types of chimneys available in the market.
Normally, the kitchen chimneys are available in two finishes.
1. Stainless steel chimney
This conventional chimney is available in stainless steel material and it’s Casey.
2. Glass chimney
This Contemporary chimney comes with a glass body or powder-coated metal. If you have a modular kitchen or a nicely decorated kitchen then you should buy a contemporary chimney.
Architecturally, The kitchen chimneys/hoods can be arranged into four types.
1. Wall-mounted chimney
It fitted on the wall support and cooktop, the hob is also located adjacent to the wall.
2. Island/Ceiling chimney
There cooking platform, and hob located at the center of the kitchen and it’s away from the walls. Kitchen chimney is hanging to the ceiling above the cooking top, hob.
3. Under Cabinet Chimney
Under Cabinet Chimneys are mounted inside wall-mounted cabinets above the cooktop to save space under the cabinet and follow the same kitchen cabinet design.
4. Corner Chimney
This type of chimney is fitted at the corner area of the kitchen platform with the wall support above of the hob.
What are duct and ductless chimneys?
1. Ducted chimney
A ducted chimney expels airborne droplets, smoke, bad odors, heat, oil and grease particles outside of the kitchen. It is powerful and convenient for your kitchen.
2. Ductless chimney
The ductless chimney is used for an apartment type of home where one does not have a way to install a ducting pipe. This chimney uses carbon/charcoal filters. You will get more ideas about charcoal filters later in this article.
First, the kitchen smoke passes through the grease filter and then through the charcoal and other filters that absorb grease, smoke, and odors. The recycled purified air was supplied back into the kitchen. Therefore, the ductless chimney is not convenient.
Which is the best filter in the chimney? And how many types of filters are in the chimney?
Primarily, there are three types of filters available in the kitchen chimney.
- Mesh filter
- Baffle filter
- Carbon/Charcoal Filter
Now let’s have more ideas of all these filters one by one and see which is the best suitable filter for you.
1. What is a mesh filter?
It is also known as a cassette filter. This filter has overlapped by aluminum or metal mesh containing minute holes that capture grease and kitchen pollutants and it expels out the kitchen smoke.
The oil and grime get caught in the minute holes pore when the air passes through this filter. There is one drawback is that the mesh filter gets blocked with grease shortly. Which affects the suction power of the chimney.
Hence the mesh/cassette chimney filters should be cleaned at least once a week or according to your use. According to this, the mesh filter needs lots of maintenance. You need to take much care to get good performance.
If you want a little relaxation time and peace of mind to clean the filters in three months on average, then you should select the second filter as below.
2. What is a baffle filter?
Mainly, the baffle filter comprises overlapping layers of stainless steel and aluminum. It has a good arrangement where the air can pass through the filter but the oil gets stuck in the filter. It changes the direction of airflow.
The cut-chop technology of the baffle filter separates smoke from grease. So even if the chimney filter is full of grease it does not affect the suction capacity of a chimney. You can remove the filter easily and also easy to clean it. The average time to clean the filter is three months or according to your usage.
Usually, the baffle filter is quite difficult to detach from the chimney to clean as it is a little bit heavy. But it’s good performance and it’s also dishwasher safe. Yes, most baffle filters can be washed using the dishwasher.
3. What is a carbon charcoal filter?
The carbon filter is also known as a Charcoal filter. Primarily, this filter is used for the ductless chimney. It comes with charcoal granules. In a ductless chimney, the kitchen smoke first passes through a grease filter and then through a charcoal filter that absorbs grease, smoke, and odors from the kitchen and recycled purified air supplied back into the kitchen. This filter needs to be replaced every 3 to 6 months or according to your cooking density.
You should not go for the charcoal filter if you…
- Frequently do a lot of frying.
- Cook oily, spicy, fishy, strong-smelling foods.
- Grill on your gas stove.
What is a filterless chimney?
A filterless chimney comes with an auto-clean chimney. In the filterless chimney, oil particles, grease, heat, and odors will stick to the motor and blower. The motor and blower will not work properly and due to this, it affects the suction power of the chimney. Therefore filterless chimney is not a good enough kitchen.
What size of the chimney will you need?
First, you’ll need to decide what size of kitchen chimney you’ll need. For the wall-mounted chimney, You will want to have your chimney would be equal to or just larger than your cooktop/gas stove so it overlaps three inches on each side.
So, if your gas stove size is 30 inches, a 36 inches kitchen chimney would overlap three inches on each side.
For the island-mounted kitchen chimney, you will want it to be a little bit larger chimney for your gas stove because it has to compete with the cross breezes in your kitchen. Make sure, any island chimney overlaps three to six inches on each side.
It is important to have an overlap of your chimney hood because the larger the coverage area of your hood, the better it can trap the unwanted grease, heat, smoke, odor, and vent it out of your kitchen.
What type of ventilation will you use?
It is always best to duct the grease, heat, smoke, and odor out of your kitchen and having the kitchen chimney that vents outside allows you to have the most options for the type of blower you can use and how powerful it can be you may not have the option of putting ductwork through your walls or ceiling.
Let’s say you live in an apartment, if this is the case where you don’t have the option to insert ducting pipe, you will have to pick the chimney which is the ductless or recirculating chimney.
The ductless chimney pulls up the air into the hood and through a filtration system that removes the grease, smoke, and odor then recirculates the air back into your kitchen.
How powerful a blower do you need?
The kitchen chimney’s ability to move air is measured in cubic feet per minute or CFM. To understand your needs you will need to consider what type of stove have and what type of cooking you will be doing.
If you have an electric stove you will need 100 CFM for every 10 inches width for the cooktop. So if you have a 40-inch wide cooktop, you need 400 CFM and if you have a gas cooktop you will want to take the max number of BTUs and divide that by a hundred so if you have a 65,000 BTU stove you will need 650 CFM.
Every situation is different regardless of the output of your stove some people will need a professional-level hood that is at least 900 CFM. To have a professional-level chimney, you need to vent the chimney out of your kitchen.
Recirculating or ductless chimneys typically can not handle professional-level needs.
How quiet do you want your kitchen chimney?
The volume of the kitchen chimney is typically measured in sones. The lower the number of sones the quieter the chimney. As a reference, one sone is approximately the equivalent of a quiet refrigerator while it’s running.
The majority of the noise from the chimney is created by the blower but you will also get noise in your chimney created by the air moving past the filters.
Local blowers or fans that are installed directly inside the chimney can be very quiet but you can lower the noise level over your chimney even more by using a remote blower that is located away from your kitchen in your attic in line with your ductwork or on your rooftop.
How tall do you need your chimney to be to mount in your kitchen?
The last thing you want to consider is to make sure that your kitchen chimney will accommodate the height of your ceiling and the height that you want to mount it over your foot dock.
Whether it’s an island insert wall or under-cabinet hood you will want to mount your kitchen chimney so the bottom of the hood is 28 to 36 inches above the surface of your stovetop. Every situation is different but the average cooktop is typically 36 inches above the floor.
So with simple math, you can understand how tall the kitchen chimney needs to be. Simply take the entire height of your ceiling and subtract the height of your cooktop then subtract the height at which you want the kitchen chimney to be mounted above your cooktop.
So let’s say you have a standard 8-foot ceiling that’s 96 inches and your cooktop is 36 inches tall, you want to mount your chimney 30 inches above your cooktop, you take the 96 inches and subtract 36 for your cooktop and subtract another 30 inches for the space between your cooktop and the bottom your kitchen chimney and you are left with 30 inches.
So your kitchen chimney needs to be 30 inches tall. Most of the chimneys with range hoods will adjust to accommodate ceilings of 8 to 9 feet tall. If your ceiling is taller you need to have chimney extensions. For the shorter ceilings, you can custom-cut the chimney to fit.
What is an auto clean chimney?
Auto heat/clean is the latest and top trending technology nowadays. An auto-clean chimney has a not-stick turbine blower. It has an auto-clean button on the chimney you need to press this button while cooking.
With the help of heat technology and a motor, oil and grease particles are forced toward the blower wall. They collected into an oil collector tray. The oil collector tray is easily detachable from the chimney to clean it. This is more convenient.
If you want to buy an auto-clean chimney then please select two baffle filters with auto-clean chimney type because it has good performance.
Though you need to clean baffle filters manually after some time otherwise it affects the suction power of the chimney.
Conclusion
Prior and basic things before buying the best kitchen chimney are the budget, the space you have available and your needs. We hope you will select the best chimney according to your needs with the help of our Top Factors to Consider Before Buying Kitchen Chimney in 2024 buying guide.
Thank you for visiting.
