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I thought I had read somewhere that home range hoods tended to not be deep enough or have high enough airflow to capture combustion products from gas stoves, bu

by nslav 6y ago

I thought I had read somewhere that home range hoods tended to not be deep enough or have high enough airflow to capture combustion products from gas stoves, but I'm having trouble finding that now. I did find this article that says they measured 80-95% reduction of pollutants which seems pretty good with 108 L/s airflow which is achievable: https://www.osti.gov/servlets/purl/1420274 https://www.osti.gov/servlets/purl/1420274 It's possible that what I was reading before was discussing direct capture of the combustion products, but it stands to reason that if you're exhausting a lot of air with the range hood it's going to limit the concentration of pollutants by cycling the air in the entire kitchen. Alternatively I could just be remembering incorrectly! My range hood is unfortunately configured to recirculate, and it's not in a convenient location to duct to the outside. If I change entirely over to electric I'll likely keep the range hood recirculating and install a central ERV or HRV that pulls air from the kitchen to manage winter time air pollution throughout the house.

nikkwong 6y ago
Oh that's interesting. A range hood that recirculates? I didn't know that was even a thing. Must have a very powerful HEPA filter in there or something; not sure how safe I would feel with that. I suppose I'll just be more proactive using my indoor air monitor when cooking; albeit it's hard to know for sure. The monitor always shows a non trivial ambient level of VOCs; so it's hard to know what is safe, what is from cooking, what can be prevented, etc..
johnboiles 6y ago
I also had a range hood that recirculated air in my home (an integrated KitchenAid model with built-in microwave). I had no idea it recirculated the air until I started measuring PM2.5 in the house and noticed it would spike like crazy any time we cooked and didn't seem to change when running the range hood fan. There was a tiny metal grease filter in it, but I can't imagine these do anything for indoor air quality. Feels borderline unethical. On my unit you can reconfigure it to vent out the back (if the unit just happens to align perfectly between the studs -- which mine didn't) or you can configure it to vent up through a duct. I had a duct run through the roof. My air quality is definitely better when running the range hood now; it still gets bad when I cook, but just less-bad than before.

by nslav 6y ago

nikkwong 6y ago

Oh that's interesting. A range hood that recirculates? I didn't know that was even a thing. Must have a very powerful HEPA filter in there or something; not sure how safe I would feel with that. I suppose I'll just be more proactive using my indoor air monitor when cooking; albeit it's hard to know for sure. The monitor always shows a non trivial ambient level of VOCs; so it's hard to know what is safe, what is from cooking, what can be prevented, etc..

johnboiles 6y ago

I also had a range hood that recirculated air in my home (an integrated KitchenAid model with built-in microwave). I had no idea it recirculated the air until I started measuring PM2.5 in the house and noticed it would spike like crazy any time we cooked and didn't seem to change when running the range hood fan. There was a tiny metal grease filter in it, but I can't imagine these do anything for indoor air quality. Feels borderline unethical. On my unit you can reconfigure it to vent out the back (if the unit just happens to align perfectly between the studs -- which mine didn't) or you can configure it to vent up through a duct. I had a duct run through the roof. My air quality is definitely better when running the range hood now; it still gets bad when I cook, but just less-bad than before.