Home Improvement Blog

Archive for June, 2010

It’s all very well having an ideal kitchen layout with every labour-saving appliance imaginable, but if the ventilation isn’t right the kitchen of your dreams could soon become one of your nightmares. So choose carefully to make sure you get the best system for your particular needs.

In its most basic from ventilation can be provided by opening a window, unless you have permanently fixed double-glazing, of course. Open-window ventilation is seldom if ever very effective and in bad weather just not practical; in winter you could also pay a fortune in lost heat. What you need is a mechanical method of ventilation.

The simplest mechanical ventilator is called a ’self-actuating’ fan. This is designed for mounting in a window pane and literally runs on air, the fan blades turning in either direction according to the difference in pressure between the inside and outside air. For the kitchen use, however, this type of fan is rarely suitable because you cannot always extract fumes and steam when you want to; if the pressure is higher outside than inside the fan will draw in fresh air and may, in fact, push the fumes, smells and steam further round the house.

A good kitchen ventilation system must provide you with positive control over fume, steam, and smell extraction, which means installing a system that incorporates an electrically-powered fan. There are two basic types: extractor fans and fan-operated cooker hoods. No kitchen, whatever its size, should be without one or the other. Read the rest of this entry »