Kitchen ventilation

Soldato
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I'm not sure if this is best in here or Home and Garden, but does anyone have any experience with improving ventilation in a home kitchen? Any sort of frying overwhelms our crappy exhaust fan and ends with us flapping towels at the smoke alarm, even with windows and doors open.

We have a ceiling mounted fan currently that vents outside, and a cooker hood with a filter. Are there any ceiling mounted fans that actually shift enough air to clear smoke properly?
 
Soldato
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Looking around online the hood may actually be convertible? If so it's an easy job as we are end terrace and the hob is against an external wall.

If it's not convertible then it's a good excuse to buy a new one.
 
Soldato
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The hoods are all so damn noisy though, so cannot conduct a conversation, so typically have window open;
and, even with fan on, it needs to take the air from somewhere anyway.

Was the smoke alarm comment semi-jovial ? have an over-ride here for 15mins,so just hit the button before smoke starts - even with extractor full power not sure it could avoid anything reaching smoke alarm.(naan breads under grill carbonizing are the worst)
 
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Get a proper kitchen extract fan, a lot of them in older properties will be 100mm/4inch ducts but you really want a 150mm/6inch badboy to shift enough air, also having two fans running at the same time in different locations might not be helping things, you could try a smoke test to see exactly what happens to the air when you have both running
 
Soldato
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The hoods are all so damn noisy though, so cannot conduct a conversation, so typically have window open;
and, even with fan on, it needs to take the air from somewhere anyway.

Was the smoke alarm comment semi-jovial ? have an over-ride here for 15mins,so just hit the button before smoke starts - even with extractor full power not sure it could avoid anything reaching smoke alarm.(naan breads under grill carbonizing are the worst)

Entirely serious I'm afraid. Not sure there is even a way to disable the alarms, they're mains wired.
 
Soldato
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Sounds like you have the incorrect fire alarm for the location. You want a heat alarm for the kitchen not a smoke alarm.
 
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Plot twist, our cooker hood can be set up for recirculation or extraction. The builders went for option 3, neither. :rolleyes: They haven't added ducting to the top of the extract fan which should either vent out through the top of the cooker hood chimney (recirc) or outside (extract). Morons.

I'm going to investigate installing an extraction kit this weekend.
 
Associate
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Sounds like you have the incorrect fire alarm for the location. You want a heat alarm for the kitchen not a smoke alarm.

Did not realise this, I might have to upgrade the smoke alarm that is just in the next room from the kitchen to a heat alarm might solve my problems :D
 
Soldato
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Did not realise this, I might have to upgrade the smoke alarm that is just in the next room from the kitchen to a heat alarm might solve my problems :D

If there's a door between these rooms close it and keep the smoke alarm.
A heat alarm really is the last resort as the fire will have developed quite seriously before this is activated
 
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I had not realised, what I have is, indeed, a heat alarm (aico ei144) which is in the kitchen ceiling about a meter away from hob,
it should be in the kitchen - no ?
also it does seem to trigger off of smoke eg burnt toast ?
 
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Without doing a little research I risk sounding foolish but, even smoke detectors come in different types which have different tolerance to cooking smoke.

Going even further out on a limb, ionisation type are uber sensitive, optical are less sensitive so toast safe and heat detectors are the least.

I know we were getting alarms in our old open plan kitchen and changed from a ionisation to optical (toast safe type) which cut down the nuisance alarms remarkably.
 
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Kitchen has a heat and carbon monoxide alarm. The heat alarm does seem over sensitive but not much I can do bar replacing it.

Got a bloke coming out on Saturday morning to install an external duct for the cooker hood.
 
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