Kitchen Extraction - Various Options

[chuckalicious]

Hi everyone, been reading threads on here all night looking for the answer but not found it yet.

Long story short, just bought a house which evidently has had lots of condensation issues with the past owners. It has no bathroom extraction (will shortly) and only a recirculation hood in the kitchen.

The hood in the kitchen seems very underpowered. Either I see if the hood can be converted to a proper extractor (easy to cut into loft above and then put a vent in the roof - boiler is currently flued that way. Or, put a separate extractor fan in the kitchen and leave the hood as it is. Now, my thoughts on a humidity controlled fan would be that it would also deal with moisture from the kettle boiling, steam from opening a freshly finished dishwasher etc.

So my questions are:

1. Which solution do you think would be better
2. If fitting an extractor, is there any benefit of wall mounted over ceiling and roof vented ones? I don't have much external wall space but the loft already has power and as it is a tiled roof I assume it is easy enough to get someone to put a proper vent in.

If all else fails a Lofty PIV will be investigated further but I'd rather do the obvious bathroom and kitchen improvements first.

Thanks

 

[endecotp]

Definitely get rid of the recirculation.

Do you dry clothes in the kitchen? Consider continuous "trickle" ventilation, maybe with heat recovery, if you think you have a major humidity problem - especially if your house is well-insulated and draught-proofed.

 

[chuckalicious]

Definitely get rid of the recirculation.

Do you dry clothes in the kitchen? Consider continuous "trickle" ventilation, maybe with heat recovery, if you think you have a major humidity problem - especially if your house is well-insulated and draught-proofed.

Thanks. We have only been in it a week so I have no idea what the previous owners did. All the windows have trickle vents which are now all open. By trickle ventilation do you mean something like the NuAire? I hope to try the extraction method from the kitchen and bathroom before cutting a rather large hole in what is quite a small hall ceiling!

The house is brick (cavity I think) with a well insulated loft and all windows are double glazed. Haven't found a single draft yet but have found a nasty bit of mould behind a bookcase which looks to be condensation related.

 

[^woody^]

A cooker hood is always better as it extracts at source before most of the steam gets chance to circulate. Hoods also extract 2, 3 or 4x as much as a normal fan.

For a fan, location wise it should be close to the hob, and if possible opposite the door so that it draws air across the kitchen.

If you go for a fan, consider one with humidistat control, and with boost and trickle modes.

 

[chuckalicious]

Thanks Woody. I took a look at the hood today and it does have the option of being converted into an extractor so that would save a bit of money. Just need to get someone to run ducting into loft space and fit a vent in the tiles.

 

[endecotp]

Do that, and then wait for a year to see if your lifestyle is as steamy as the last people!

(Try to keep the ducting as short as possible, and use rigid rather than flexible if you can.)

 

[chuckalicious]

Thanks end. I was wondering if ducting length would be an issue. I assume the longer it is the more chance of condensatiom and water running back down.

 

[endecotp]

The longer it is (and the more bends) the slower the air is moved. How long do you think it would be, roughly?

 

[chuckalicious]

Less than 2m hopefully. Hard to tell right now though.