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It's interesting how information bubbles up. Our daughter has asthma. When we were away for 2 months from our home it cleared up substantially. So, we got an a

It's interesting how information bubbles up. Our daughter has asthma. When we were away for 2 months from our home it cleared up substantially. So, we got an air quality monitor (after pretty careful study) last year. Everything was rosy, except the VOCs went off the chart during and after cooking on our gas hob. And now a few months later everywhere I look I see this study.

jb1991 4y ago
I wonder how effective the extractor is above the stove, if you always put it on its max fan setting when cooking, would it improve the VOC and other gases detected? Which air quality monitor did you get?
- ianai 4y ago
  Unless clearly proven otherwise it’s most likely venting into the room.
  - sendfoods 4y ago
    Maybe these type of stovetop-height vents [1] can make a large difference here. [1] https://www.bora.com/be/de/kochfeldabzugssysteme/bora-s-pure/ https://www.bora.com/be/de/kochfeldabzugssysteme/bora-s-pure...
    - tpxl 4y ago
      That design is garbage. Hot stuff from your stove will naturally rise, so capturing it above the stove is much better.
    - manojlds 4y ago
      Is it doing some Harry Potter or Ghostbuster magic? Also, pressure cookers have a vent on the top and blow the steam up. Also what happens to spillages? Edit: they do say this - "If anything is spilt during cooking, the integrated tray safely catches both solids and liquids." - yeah that's gonna go well. Like another commenter says, this is total garbage.
  - jhugo 4y ago
    Is this common? I've only lived in a few places with gas hobs (a couple of places in Europe and a couple of places in Asia), and all of them had an extractor with a vent through the wall to the outside. I thought that was basically universal.
    - Brybry 4y ago
      In the US, especially apartments, kitchen cooktops often have no ventilation (or the hood will even fake vent into a cabinet). I don't really know how it's code but it might be because there's often a window in the room that can be used instead? I think that's how some bathrooms got away with not having a vent too.
  - Tor3 4y ago
    I've never seen one venting into the room. There's always been a vent to outside. Otherwise it would be pointless to have one - like using an air conditioner venting the hot air inside the room.
    - tym0 4y ago
      In the UK all the one I've had vented into the room sadly...
      - Tor3 4y ago
        That's.. incredible. Why is it used at all then? It sounds like worse than not using it. If I'm not venting outside when I'm frying something then the smoke alarm goes off too.
        kmlx 4y ago
        because it filters the air, it doesn’t just simply put the air back into the room.
        manojlds 4y ago
        The carbon filter removes smoke and such right, so the smoke alarm won't be triggered. What do you mean when I'm not venting outside? You mean when you are not running the extractor?
        Tor3 4y ago
        Sometimes when I'm running the extractor I may at the same time have the door to the living room open and the kitchen window open and running the living room wood stove at maximum - if I do, it sucks so much air from the room that the ventilator in the kitchen doesn't get a chance: The stove takes air via the kitchen window and goes straight past the ventilator even if at max, and into the living room. Where the detector sniffs enough to notice. A rare situation of course, but it has happened to me a handful of times over the years (and also the opposite - ventilator in kitchen running at max, kitchen window closed, living room wood stove going, the vent sucks smoke from the living room wood stove and the smoke detector goes off). As to the other comment - my ventilator doesn't have a carbon filter and I have little experience with those. I recon it will remedy some of the problems with re-venting back into the room compared with the alternative (using nothing). And I've seen vents in Japan with carbon filters, or at least something similar - but they vent outside, not inside. I wonder though about all the other kind of fumes from cooking, the metal-grid "filter" in my vent gets quite greasy and needs to be washed and cleaned now and then.
  - is_true 4y ago
    If it's venting in the room it's a filter, not a extractor
- hannob 4y ago
  > I wonder how effective the extractor is above the stove, if you always put it on its max fan setting when cooking, would it improve the VOC and other gases detected? The answer is likely "Yes, it improves things a little bit, but it's still a terrible idea to keep a device spitting dangerous emissions inside your home".
  - bayindirh 4y ago
    > it's still a terrible idea to keep a device spitting dangerous emissions inside your home. I completely agree, but some people will grab their burning pitchforks and will try to convince you that they can't cook as well on an electric stove. I use both of them, and gas considerably lowers the air quality (I can feel it), and prefer electric very much, however it has a learning curve, and people don't want to change. Also, AFAIK, you can't use a wok as it's meant to be used on an electric stove.
    - kibwen 4y ago
      Every militant gas-stove evangelist that I have personally known has done an about-face after a month of using a simple countertop induction cooktop. Their expensive high-end gas ranges are literally gathering dust. The ability to have such precise and rapid control over stovetop temperature is utterly transformative in a way that almost nobody realizes yet. (To be fair, it's hard to fully capitalize on this transformation since most cookbooks are still written with primitive "set the burner to 'high'" rather than "set the burner to exact so-and-so degrees".) As for woks, that hasn't stopped China from being the largest market for induction cooktops, and they even make custom-shaped induction cooktops designed for woks.
    - robinsonb5 4y ago
      I have a gas cooker which was already installed when I moved into my currentl home. I don't particularly care whether I'm cooking on a gas flame, an induction ring or an old fashioned electric element - but at a time when we keep hearing about the risk of rolling power cuts, I care more that I can still heat up food and water even when the power's out.
- jonahbenton 4y ago
  Sample size of one, but ours is pretty effective (and loud lol)! We have an old Wolf stove, the fan vents directly outside, and I have been ad hoc testing it with an Awair sensor over the past year. Without running the fan the Awair score drops from the 90s to the 40-50s pretty quickly when running the stove (either oven or surface) and takes about 45 minutes to return to normal once the stove is off. With the fan on high the score stays in the high 70s to 80s. My ears, tho...
vintermann 4y ago
There's been some people pushing air quality hard lately, not least dynomight, a blogger who seems to have getting on HN's front page worked out pretty well. Not that I have anything against it. I got an air purifier myself over these discussions - it seemed like a fairly cheap and easy thing to do in the time of covid, without worrying too much who's behind any possible influence campaigns. And of course I noticed that my indoors air quality was excellent, except when I was cooking. And I don't even use gas, I use an old non-induction electric stovetop. It's hard to get temperatures right. Considering getting both an induction stove, and a better sensor that could track CO2 too. After a year with air purification, and after the first bout of a cough-cold in a year, I feel like I appreciate the service my lungs give to my body. Nice to take better care of them (it's time to change that HEPA filter too).
- prepend 4y ago
  > I got an air purifier myself over these discussions I’ve been investigating this and the market seems crowded. Do you have any research that you did to help you decide? What model did you go with and why? Sorry for the digression, but I think a random HN reader’s pick is more useful than SEO’s Google results or ConsumerReports or Wirecutter.
  - donkeyd 4y ago
    Purifiers are all about the filters, anything else is pretty much just marketing BS. On that note, Ikea has some air purifiers[0] that aren't very expensive and use HEPA filters with optional carbon filter to remove smells. They have basic ones and 'smart' ones in different form factors (even one that is a table!). We have cats and it really helped removed the cat smell from out house. [0] https://dynomight.net/ikea-purifier/ https://dynomight.net/ikea-purifier/
  - vintermann 4y ago
    I got some Electrolux thing with HEPA filters. It looked nice, was on sale, and didn't do terrible in the tests I could find. The filters are expensive, though - probably unnecessarily so, and the app integration thing is kind of iffy. I have a lingering suspicion that if I replaced the filters with something "unapproved" it wouldn't start, and I hate that sort of thing. But maybe I'm just being paranoid. There was some sort of notice about source availability on request, so I think it uses GPL software in there somewhere. In short, I should have done better research myself. But at least it works.

jb1991 4y ago

I wonder how effective the extractor is above the stove, if you always put it on its max fan setting when cooking, would it improve the VOC and other gases detected? Which air quality monitor did you get?

ianai 4y ago
Unless clearly proven otherwise it’s most likely venting into the room.
- sendfoods 4y ago
  Maybe these type of stovetop-height vents [1] can make a large difference here. [1] https://www.bora.com/be/de/kochfeldabzugssysteme/bora-s-pure/ https://www.bora.com/be/de/kochfeldabzugssysteme/bora-s-pure...
  - tpxl 4y ago
    That design is garbage. Hot stuff from your stove will naturally rise, so capturing it above the stove is much better.
  - manojlds 4y ago
    Is it doing some Harry Potter or Ghostbuster magic? Also, pressure cookers have a vent on the top and blow the steam up. Also what happens to spillages? Edit: they do say this - "If anything is spilt during cooking, the integrated tray safely catches both solids and liquids." - yeah that's gonna go well. Like another commenter says, this is total garbage.
- jhugo 4y ago
  Is this common? I've only lived in a few places with gas hobs (a couple of places in Europe and a couple of places in Asia), and all of them had an extractor with a vent through the wall to the outside. I thought that was basically universal.
  - Brybry 4y ago
    In the US, especially apartments, kitchen cooktops often have no ventilation (or the hood will even fake vent into a cabinet). I don't really know how it's code but it might be because there's often a window in the room that can be used instead? I think that's how some bathrooms got away with not having a vent too.
- Tor3 4y ago
  I've never seen one venting into the room. There's always been a vent to outside. Otherwise it would be pointless to have one - like using an air conditioner venting the hot air inside the room.
  - tym0 4y ago
    In the UK all the one I've had vented into the room sadly...
    - Tor3 4y ago
      That's.. incredible. Why is it used at all then? It sounds like worse than not using it. If I'm not venting outside when I'm frying something then the smoke alarm goes off too.
      - kmlx 4y ago
        because it filters the air, it doesn’t just simply put the air back into the room.
      - manojlds 4y ago
        The carbon filter removes smoke and such right, so the smoke alarm won't be triggered. What do you mean when I'm not venting outside? You mean when you are not running the extractor?
        Tor3 4y ago
        Sometimes when I'm running the extractor I may at the same time have the door to the living room open and the kitchen window open and running the living room wood stove at maximum - if I do, it sucks so much air from the room that the ventilator in the kitchen doesn't get a chance: The stove takes air via the kitchen window and goes straight past the ventilator even if at max, and into the living room. Where the detector sniffs enough to notice. A rare situation of course, but it has happened to me a handful of times over the years (and also the opposite - ventilator in kitchen running at max, kitchen window closed, living room wood stove going, the vent sucks smoke from the living room wood stove and the smoke detector goes off). As to the other comment - my ventilator doesn't have a carbon filter and I have little experience with those. I recon it will remedy some of the problems with re-venting back into the room compared with the alternative (using nothing). And I've seen vents in Japan with carbon filters, or at least something similar - but they vent outside, not inside. I wonder though about all the other kind of fumes from cooking, the metal-grid "filter" in my vent gets quite greasy and needs to be washed and cleaned now and then.
- is_true 4y ago
  If it's venting in the room it's a filter, not a extractor
hannob 4y ago
> I wonder how effective the extractor is above the stove, if you always put it on its max fan setting when cooking, would it improve the VOC and other gases detected? The answer is likely "Yes, it improves things a little bit, but it's still a terrible idea to keep a device spitting dangerous emissions inside your home".
- bayindirh 4y ago
  > it's still a terrible idea to keep a device spitting dangerous emissions inside your home. I completely agree, but some people will grab their burning pitchforks and will try to convince you that they can't cook as well on an electric stove. I use both of them, and gas considerably lowers the air quality (I can feel it), and prefer electric very much, however it has a learning curve, and people don't want to change. Also, AFAIK, you can't use a wok as it's meant to be used on an electric stove.
  - kibwen 4y ago
    Every militant gas-stove evangelist that I have personally known has done an about-face after a month of using a simple countertop induction cooktop. Their expensive high-end gas ranges are literally gathering dust. The ability to have such precise and rapid control over stovetop temperature is utterly transformative in a way that almost nobody realizes yet. (To be fair, it's hard to fully capitalize on this transformation since most cookbooks are still written with primitive "set the burner to 'high'" rather than "set the burner to exact so-and-so degrees".) As for woks, that hasn't stopped China from being the largest market for induction cooktops, and they even make custom-shaped induction cooktops designed for woks.
  - robinsonb5 4y ago
    I have a gas cooker which was already installed when I moved into my currentl home. I don't particularly care whether I'm cooking on a gas flame, an induction ring or an old fashioned electric element - but at a time when we keep hearing about the risk of rolling power cuts, I care more that I can still heat up food and water even when the power's out.
jonahbenton 4y ago
Sample size of one, but ours is pretty effective (and loud lol)! We have an old Wolf stove, the fan vents directly outside, and I have been ad hoc testing it with an Awair sensor over the past year. Without running the fan the Awair score drops from the 90s to the 40-50s pretty quickly when running the stove (either oven or surface) and takes about 45 minutes to return to normal once the stove is off. With the fan on high the score stays in the high 70s to 80s. My ears, tho...

vintermann 4y ago

There's been some people pushing air quality hard lately, not least dynomight, a blogger who seems to have getting on HN's front page worked out pretty well. Not that I have anything against it. I got an air purifier myself over these discussions - it seemed like a fairly cheap and easy thing to do in the time of covid, without worrying too much who's behind any possible influence campaigns. And of course I noticed that my indoors air quality was excellent, except when I was cooking. And I don't even use gas, I use an old non-induction electric stovetop. It's hard to get temperatures right. Considering getting both an induction stove, and a better sensor that could track CO2 too. After a year with air purification, and after the first bout of a cough-cold in a year, I feel like I appreciate the service my lungs give to my body. Nice to take better care of them (it's time to change that HEPA filter too).

prepend 4y ago
> I got an air purifier myself over these discussions I’ve been investigating this and the market seems crowded. Do you have any research that you did to help you decide? What model did you go with and why? Sorry for the digression, but I think a random HN reader’s pick is more useful than SEO’s Google results or ConsumerReports or Wirecutter.
- donkeyd 4y ago
  Purifiers are all about the filters, anything else is pretty much just marketing BS. On that note, Ikea has some air purifiers[0] that aren't very expensive and use HEPA filters with optional carbon filter to remove smells. They have basic ones and 'smart' ones in different form factors (even one that is a table!). We have cats and it really helped removed the cat smell from out house. [0] https://dynomight.net/ikea-purifier/ https://dynomight.net/ikea-purifier/
- vintermann 4y ago
  I got some Electrolux thing with HEPA filters. It looked nice, was on sale, and didn't do terrible in the tests I could find. The filters are expensive, though - probably unnecessarily so, and the app integration thing is kind of iffy. I have a lingering suspicion that if I replaced the filters with something "unapproved" it wouldn't start, and I hate that sort of thing. But maybe I'm just being paranoid. There was some sort of notice about source availability on request, so I think it uses GPL software in there somewhere. In short, I should have done better research myself. But at least it works.