Here’s why your Range Hood doesn’t suck! (And kinda sucks) 

What about sewer pipe vents? Methane. I'm thinking that applies as well.

This is the first thing that comes to mind.....open a damn window 😂

I have a BlueStar 1200 CFM 42" Pyramid hood over our 36" BlueStar 6 burner range. I open the kitchen window too. The only problem is, we live in the midwwest and when we;re in the dead of winter, we freze our butts off. LOL In the last two house I had a 60" Garland full commercial with a 60 inch garland hood, and prior to that a 48" Viking Commercial (Black) range with a Viking 48" (vent a fan" hood. This BlueStar is easily the best of the 3. More powerful, able to run very consistently under super high heat and really does the job. BlueStar is the UL rated rated version of Garland Commercial stuff. I'd never buy another Viking again, that thing looked great, but it was a very low quality and flimsy unit back then. Hopefully they've made a bunch of improvements by now. BlueStar is my favorite brand, ever with the cheezee name, it's a beast

@@typhoonjenkins8330 We have the same problem in winter. Montana. I just put a sweater on while cooking. Problem solved.

I put two 4” round ducts coming in under the floor in the basement and then in the wall up high one comes out in the laundry room and the other over the kitchen cabinets. The cold air won’t rise up in the pipe unless a fan is running. Our home is small but has double stud foam filled walls.

would an air exhcnager do that

If you had an EPA certified wood stove, your house would leak enough to supply the wood stove and the required air in a controlled EPA certified wood stove would not be the same as a pre EPA wood stove. With the outside air supply, you are cooling the wood stove and it does not burn as clean as it could, if the air was RT. So you are losing heat through smoke instead of burning those combustibles in the smoke(when using an EPA certified wood stove). If you had an air tight house, an ERV would be a better option from an efficiency standpoint.

@@gibblespascack1418 what about HRV?

If just opening a window is a suitable solution for you, then no, you don't need all that "crap", but we don't all live in Oklahoma. The powered, heated make-up air system I bought from Fan Tech also includes a filter.

And even if it’s not a room you’ll have a ton better performance than without makeup air. Depending on how you route the makeup air you can essentially use the hood as a central exhaust system and it’ll pull air from around the entire building and it’ll do an amazing job of letting your exhaust work super efficient

HVAC

That’s what I was thinking too. But realistically ERV should cover that, not sure it needs making up air? 2 other options: -Would be cool to see how much extra air an ERV brings in with change of pressure of a big fan being used. -wire ERV boost mode to the fan?

2 reasons I can think of: 1. There is grease and other contaminants you would not want gumming up your ERV exchange filter. 2. Most ERV capacities are nowhere near the CFM needed for a proper hood vent. ERVs are 150-250 and hood vents are 600+. You would have a huge imbalance. I think it would be a GREAT idea if someone could combine the two though. If I could steal Matt's phrasing. That would be "bomber" lol

I agree with Catch here in the comments. Another issue about the grease is, if there were ever a grease fire, flames that come from the cook top, or some other source, moat jurisdictions have the venting duct in a heavy enough gadge metal so that it will allow a 30 minute burn inside of the pipe before it eats through the metal and into the structural members of the home. ERV's are not meant to accept this kind of exhaust air too because of the micro oils formed when cooking!

@@brymidrif Yeah obviously not to suck range hood air, I think we were saying the ERV is already the fresh air intake and would equalize the home slowly back to normal or go into a boost mode white the hood fan is exhausting air. All that without needing more systems in a house.

@@scp8412 unless you get a super beefy ERV (or multiple ERV's) with the capability to do "intake only" mode and have the ability to match the cfm of the vent hood exhaust, you would still get pressure imbalances. If you equalize slowly, at some point those pressure imbalances would cause your vent hood to start struggling to exhaust what it is designed to remove because there is not enough air replacing it from the ERV setup.

Ha! Thanks for being 1st!

Yea! I was looking for somebody to say that. 😂

I think that's it: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-Gyph72_y8wQ.html

yes

What’s the cfm for the bath fans?

The answer, as always, is "it depends". Obviously with a tight house the actual extracted volume will be less than nominal for the extractors, especially if you operated them concurrently. This may be only mildly inconvenient to you, as it'll take longer for your bathrooms to clear; BUT: if you have "feeble" combustion systems like a simple wood burner or a gravity- vented gas water heater you could pull combustion fumes back down the flues into the house with both bathroom extractor fans running. That can be dangerous. You should look at your local building codes, as houses built in different years have different code requirements. In general, all the states in the union have a requirement for separate makeup air (i.e. in addition to your passive combustion air inlet) when you have combustion devices with un-powered vents AND a range hood of 400CFM or greater. (In Minnesota, where I live, the threshold is 300 CFM.) I recently purchased a range hood rated at 950CFM, because I like doing "high energy" cooking, like steaks and stir fries. I assure you we don't simply open windows in mid-January to let in "fresh" air... One episode of that technique won me my wife 's approval for the expenditure for the make-up air system _real_ quick :-) so... The hood cost me around $500, but the heated, filtered, variable speed fan-assisted makeup air I need in order to be able to USE the range hood cost me $2500 !! Anything is better than depositing cooking grease all over every surface in the house, though... Additional info: My make up air system came from Fan Tech. It ships with a sensor to detect extractor fan motor current to control the make-up air fan: once calibrated it would balance the air pressure, but I'm upgrading my fan speed controller to be fed by a true pressure balancing system with my own custom system. Hope all that helps.

@@frqnj this isn’t determined yet, but I suppose they will be in the 80-100 cfm range.

@@julianopificius6910 the only combustion appliance other than the range will be a direct vent fireplace. This isn’t a concern since it’ll provide its own fresh air. I have already spec’d the Fantech makeup air system for our range hood, so we should be good there. The ERV will be ducted to extract from each bathroom. Hopefully this will be enough in addition to a low performing bath fan to remove moisture in a sufficient amount of time. My solution so far if it doesn’t is to add a 120v switched damper to the bath fan switch and run it through a filter box for passive makeup air. I was hoping to avoid this if possible though so I don’t have unnecessary penetrations in the exterior envelope.

66, on the other hand...

Can you even find an ERV to provide enough flow for a range hood?

Erv/hrv's are not meant for kitchen exhaust, they would clog up and stop running in no time from the grease. Thats why commercial exaust systems are made from heavy black iron ductwork and wrapped with fireproof insulation due to the possibility of grease fires. And they need to be cleaned regularly.

@@D2O2 yeah, they make them big.

@@mitchdenner9743 How big? Residential units top out in the 200 CFM range, maybe some newer models slightly larger, but not big enough for a range hood in the 500+++ cfm range.

@@D2O2 as big as you need, most all of the manufacturers offer from 200 up to 75,000 cfm units, whether or not they consider them residential or commercial is irrelevant, if you have the electricity to run it and can afford it, they have it.

Cheech and chong may have given a better demonstration but I get the point. "I think we're parked man"

im guessing its not very cold where you live.

I agree with you

@@buildshow and Jack Maher, be careful with local codes: in cold climates like the upper Midwest they won't let you vent fresh, untempered air straight into the return side of your HVAC system. In that case, make-up air must be completely separate. I'm in Minnesota, and had to look all that up for my system (Fan Tech).

@@julianopificius6910 Why not? Is it just because most people would be unaware/uncaring if there was a malfunction causing excess fresh air and energy use?

You can't just open windows in winter in cold climates :-)

Yes, but the closer the better. Remember its pulling in outside uncondioned air , and also pulling out your conditioned air from your home. You really want to short circuit the path of make up air to the hood.

I disagree about the goodness of having the makeup air outlet really close to the vent hood. IMO you want the smoke-producing item (i.e. the range top) to be located between the makeup air supply and the vent hood. Otherwise, the vent fan will just be exhausting the makeup air while the smoke still stays in the room.

But isn’t an ERV balanced? So it still wouldn’t be able to equalize the pressure differential between the house and outside.

@@wesleywahl9675 Some ERVs have fresh air input capability, but that's typically only about 150CFM, so it only works with low-flow hoods - 300CFM or less.

I'm thinking that's what I'll do.

Interesting you say that. I said the same thing, and the response was “you won’t be cracking the window when it’s 100*f outside”. Curious if makeup air brings in hot air.

​@@aaroncedillos8663Of course it brings in hot air, cold air too. Some units have pre heaters.

Happy to give it to you!

@@buildshow got me, I have no daughters a

Because cooking fumes will be circulated all over the house, depositing airborne grease everywhere.

Yeah he does; he's a bit imprecise on some of the physics details, but he's sound. Making videos presents a difficult balance: if he were to get too far into the weeds, he'd lose some of his audience. You can always do a bit more research if you want to get more precise info. The important takeaway is that extractor fans can't work if you don't replace the air they pull out. You can do that with cracks in the walls, an open window, a simple vent and damper, or a filtered, ECM fan driven, heated system, depending on where you are and how much air you're pulling out, but the basic fact remains: what goes out must be replaced by something coming in.