Cooker Hoods – any comments?

[Majjie]

It’s me again. I’m still writing my guide to appliances for kitchen buyers and have (as I said) given this site lots of plugs.

I’ve been doing a bit of research into online complaints and found one about a Baumatic cooker hood. The complaint was that it didn’t remove steam from the kitchen and that water was condensing on the hood and dripping back down onto the hob. Baumatic’s response was to say that their hoods weren’t supposed to remove steam!

On checking the Baumatic user guide … sure enough it says (in bold): “Note that the cooker hood removes odours from your kitchen, not steam” … and that’s for all situations … not just when installed in a re-circulating mode.

Hmm, I thought … perhaps this is a really cheap, naff cooker hood with a low extraction rate. But no … it’s a steel and glass model … with an extraction rate of 500 cu.m per hour (not excessively good but not bad either).

So then I popped over to Elica to see what they say … because I really rate their cooker hoods … they say:

“A cooker hood will, if installed with ducting, extract from the kitchen virtually all the steam and strong cooking odours.”

So what does everyone here think? Are Baumatic just giving themselves a cheeky get out clause? Is there something different about the way they make their hoods? Or should we just expect our kitchens to steam up?

[Martin]

Re: Cooker Hoods – any comments?

Majjie wrote:“A cooker hood will, if installed with ducting, extract from the kitchen virtually all the steam and strong cooking odours.”

Note the word “virtually” as that indeed is the best you could achieve in the most ideal of situations. The many variants to consider are: –

The size and extraction capabilities of the cooker hood.
It’s relationship in size to the hob area it’s meant to extract.
The height between both units.
The length of ducting required and not to compromise the extraction rate.
The positioning of said ducting and its termination point outside.
The prevailing weather conditions outside the property. (i.e strong westerly winds blasting against a west facing outside wall vent during cooking).
The environment within its location should be adequately ventilated in preventing condensation prior to any cooking medium being in operation.

All of the above will ensure that “virtually” all steam and strong cooking odours are extracted adequately. 😀

HTH?

[Majjie]

Re: Cooker Hoods – any comments?

Thanks Martin … I get your drift, that there are lots of variables … but Baumatic also stipulate that the vent ducting shouldn’t be more than 3m long with only one 90 degree bend. (I am impressed with how easy it is to get this information!)

Assuming the widths and heights are all appropriate and the outside conditions aren’t extreme, I would expect a cooker hood to remove – lets say – most of the steam.

Baumatic are saying that they don’t expect their cooker hoods to extract steam at all.

Is that just because they don’t want to go and check on all those other things … to see if there really is a problem?

Majjie

[kwatt]

Re: Cooker Hoods – any comments?

Hi Majjie,

I suspect that poor quality hoods are being used by Baumatic is probably the answer to most of the above but this article should help that I wrote a while ago.

In short there’s hoods that rattle a bit and light up and there’s ones that actually do what they were intended to do.

HTH

K.

[Majjie]

Re: Cooker Hoods – any comments?

I have read your excellent article before K and … in the days when I used to sit in showrooms … the Elica reps were always very knowledgeable.

I’m in two minds about Baumatic … they used to have a really terrible reputation in the kitchen showrooms (exploding ovens – the lot) … but their sales rep (surprise!) and an appliance retailer (more believably) reckoned their quality had improved a lot in recent years. They certainly have some nice looking products … but I’m just not impressed that they should say their extractors don’t extract steam!

Perhaps I’ll just suggest that everyone should have an Elica cooker hood whatever make the hob/cooker is.

Majjie

[kwatt]

Re: Cooker Hoods – any comments?

In my experience…

The Elica hoods do what they say they do.

Some of the more upmarket hoods do as well, but there are some that, for the money, ain’t that great and seem more about style than function.

But one thing I think I left out of that is that, whilst all these glass and stainless hoods are the rage they are an absolute nightmare to keep clean. 😉

K.

[Martin]

Re: Cooker Hoods – any comments?

Majjie wrote:Baumatic are saying that they don’t expect their cooker hoods to extract steam at all.

I’m really not sure what is meant by that statement but technically speaking no cooker hood extracts steam at all. Their function is to attract steam vapours toward it’s filtration surfaces whereupon it condenses, the pollutants it carries are deposited and the remaining water is vapourised by the constant airflow. 😉

[Majjie]

Re: Cooker Hoods – any comments?

Martin wrote:
… technically speaking no cooker hood extracts steam at all. Their function is to attract steam vapours toward it’s filtration surfaces whereupon it condenses, the pollutants it carries are deposited and the remaining water is vapourised by the constant airflow. 😉

OK, OK … I should have said that Baumatic don’t expect their cooker hoods to remove steam from the kitchen 😆

kwatt wrote:
But one thing I think I left out of that is that, whilst all these glass and stainless hoods are the rage they are an absolute nightmare to keep clean

We can certainly agree there … although I think glass is easier to clean than steel.

Majjie

[Martin]

Re: Cooker Hoods – any comments?

Extraction hoods of whatever type attract grease like a magnet it has to be said. The chimney types fair better than the retractable cupboard door ones do though overall in that access to cleaning them is better.

I’m curious to note that there’s little or no mention anywhere these days regarding those that are forced into having to use the recirculation option to many of the ones available on the market?

It goes without saying that this option fairs little better than just stirring the air inside the kitchen. But nevertheless they do have some benefit in removing cooking odours, smoke and (cough) steam albeit marginally.

It wasn’t always so…… years ago (1970/80’s I’m going back to here 😉 ) the more ‘up-market’ recirculatory hoods incorporated special UV lamps that killed germs and sanatised the air as it blew the air back into the kitchen. They had the usual grease/charcoal filters as well of course but for some reason the idea was dropped? Maybe because the bulbs were harmful to anyone the looked directly into the them I guess? But they sure were very effective indeed.

They still use the same technology these days in the domestic market but only in portable air conditioning systems, which is a shame. 🙁

[Majjie]

Re: Cooker Hoods – any comments?

Well … you learn something new every day. I’ve certainly never heard of hoods having uv lights … but then it was so much before my time :snigger:

[Martin]

Re: Cooker Hoods – any comments?

Majjie wrote:I’ve certainly never heard of hoods having uv lights … but then it was so much before my time :snigger:

Well there you go! …………..And there’s quite a few out there these days doing their bit over many a hob unit. Neff at the time were the brand for kitchen appliances and sold 1000’s of them!

[Majjie]

Re: Cooker Hoods – any comments?

Hmm … I’ve now wasted most of the afternoon puzzling over this. I’ve taken out a trial subscription to Which? … so eat this reply after reading it, since I probably shouldn’t be divulging the details (alternatively go to http://www.which.co.uk/to get your own subscription and see individual model details) … and I’ve looked at more Baumatic user manuals than is natural.

Last time Which tested cooker hoods … 7 of the 23 they tested failed their steam test (which was to reduce the humidity in the room by at least 30{e5d1b7155a01ef1f3b9c9968eaba33524ee81600d00d4be2b4d93ac2e58cec2d} in 8 minutes). Some of the big brands and big hoods passed the test easily but were criticised for being too noisy. One of their Best Buys (not a Baumatic) wasn’t good at removing steam and had the condensation problem that was mentioned in that first complaint that I saw.

Funnily enough, Which criticised a big Baumatic chimney for being no good at removing steam but said that two small ones they tested (one integrated and one canopy) were good at it. One of these doesn’t have the Baumatic warning in the user manual about not being supposed to remove steam – the other does – even though it can remove steam (I suspect the first manual is an old version).

So now you know! Cooker hoods aren’t necessarily good at removing steam.

Majjie

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