How To Choose The Correct Vent-A-Hood For Your Kitchen

 How To Choose a Vent A Hood

 Vent a hood has the longest warranty in the industry ( 5 years )   vent a hood has expanded their line to include M series ( to fit more horsepower into a smaller width ) , V line premium power lung ( to offer a hood with a small 6 inch height )  , and ARS filterless hoods even though they are best known for the Magic Lung internal blower. It can be confusing to differentiate the products that make up there catalog and how to choose the best model for your kitchen project . All of the hoods in their product line involve different recommended mounting heights, different sone levels, and different filter types. Kitchen ventilation is one of the most complicated and misunderstood appliances in the home and this article will help shed light on your decision making process.

What are people's top 5 concerns when it comes to a kitchen hood?  Ranking among peoples highest concerns are the ease of cleaning, overall volume level, style and design,  along with performance and cost.

Cleaning a ventilation hood is normally a difficult task, the frequency of cleaning will depend on the end users cooking habits. The better the hood is at capturing contaminants,  the less airborne particles will have the ability to make their way into other rooms of the house. Vent a hood's patented magic lung blower is filterless. The key to this design involves the speed at which the motor spins that will intern liquefy grease into a blower housing. There new patented easy clean system has made the cleaning process easier than ever. The end user will simply remove a tray to empty the liquefied grease.  

The sound volume of a hood will involve the ambient sound a motor makes while in operation , in combination with the sound the air makes as it passes through the filter and into the duct pipe. The magic lung blower is the quietest system on the market.  The motors make almost no ambient sound and 95 percent of what is heard is the sound of air movement. This is why there is such an emphasis on using flat galvanized duct pipe and making as few turns as possible during your installation. The type of duct pipe used along with the number of sharp turns made can have an impact on the overall sound volume.  Since vent a hood patented magic lung system does not require the air to pass through a screen style filter,  it will keep the sound of air movement to a minimum.  A second factor to their patented design involves the use of multiple motors spinning at 1550 RPM's ( revolution per minute ). They determined that adding additional motors to your hood will double the power and only impact the overall sound of moving air marginally. You can compare their single blower hood at 300 CFM's rated at 5.4 sones to their double blower 600 CFM unit rated at 6.5 sones. This means that they have doubles the amount of air movement while only effecting the overall sound volume by 1.1 Sones.  When you compare this with competitors' hoods that feature a single blower that spins faster and faster to reach higher levels of air movement, you will find that the vent a hood design with multiple blowers can move the same volume while remaining whisper quite. This makes the vent a hood models with a magic lung blower system the most desirable on the market. 

When reviewing performance we must also address capture. You can imagine a vent a hood like an upside down bathtub.  As the contaminants rise off the stove top they are captured and contained in the hood canopy before they are drawn into the blower system.  This adds an extra element of performance over a competitors hoods that feature a screen filter. The filter will often reflect 20 to 30 percent of contaminates back into the home before they can capture them inside the hood making them less efficient.  Vent a hoods that feature the magic lung have a canopy to collect rising contaminants giving them an additional edge on performance over filter style hoods. The manufacturer would also recommend a 3 inch overhang on either side of your cooktop if you cabinet configuration will allow. This would require a 36 inch hood over a 30 inch cooktop and a 42 inch hood over a 36 inch cooktop. As smoke rises from your cooktop it begins to cool at a specific elevation. When the smoke cools it has more lateral movement.  For the best performance, a 3 inch overhang on either side of your cooktop is recommended for laterally moving smoke. This is not always possible if you cabinets are set at the same width as your stovetop and its completely acceptable with the understanding that the manufacturer cannot give you the same performance guarantee. We would also recommend that the hood depth cover your front burner by 1 1/2 inches. You will also notice that each hood has a recommended mounting height. The manufacturer has tested each hood to determine it recommended mounting height and recommends you follow these guidelines during installation. Mounting the hood above the recommended mounting height will have an impact on the performance since rising smoke cools off and begins to have lateral movement back into your kitchen.

Vent a hood has a vast catalog of designs to suite your individual style.  You may decide that your hood will be a focal point of your kitchen and this will attract you to the designer series collection.  As a custom hood manufacturer, they can also make accents to any hood including decorative rails, vertical bands made from stainless, copper, or brass along with decorative rivet lines. If you can draw it on paper, they can design and build it. Contact us at the kitchenfoundry for details.  If a focal point hood is not your style you can shop from their large selection of liners (Your cabinet maker builds a surround from wood that matches your adjacent cabinets and installs a vent a hood liner inside making the hood invisible)

When you are deciding how much power ( or CFM's ) you need for your kitchen you should refer to you owners manual that came with your cooktop.  Here you will find that each burner is rated with a certain BTU output. These days many of the cooktops on the market will offer a heat output of 20K to 25K per burner. Since the average user will spend most of their time cooking on 1-2 burners simultaneously it will be easy to add up the total BTU output to meet your daily needs. With the BTU output of 1-2 burners you can cross reference this number with the vent a hood you are considering. If you typically cook for a large household you may find that using 3-4 burners at the same time  meets your typical daily needs and this will require you to shop for a ventilation hood that has a higher CFM rating.

This leads us to the new lines offered by the manufacturer. Vent a hood has begun to offer M series, K series, and ARS filterless hoods. They have also offered remote blowers for quite some time.  As we discussed earlier the M series hood ( similar to other brands on the market) feature a single blower that spins faster and faster as you need more power. This style hood also comes complete with a filter that the air must pass through unlike the magic lung design the company is most known for. They began to offer this series for people that need more CFM in a smaller hood and the M series can get more CFM through a smaller diameter duct pipe. If you already have 7 inch or 10 inch dimaeter pipe existing in your walls and you dont want to replace the pipe with a larger size the M series may be a better fit since the magic lung calls out for 6 , 8, 10, and 12 inch dimaeter pipes but not 7. We know the magic lung is quieter and has the added benefit of a canopy to help boost its performance, however there will still be cases where a customer feels they will need maximum CFM in a small hood. The trade-off with this design is the operating volume or sone level.  For customers that feel they will cook on more than 4 burners simultaneously they may feel they need 12oo CFM in a 30 or 36 inch space. In these rare instances you may decide that the vent a hood M series would suite your needs best. Since the magic lung design can only accommodate 600 CFM in a 30 or 36 inch space - the M series from vent a hood will give you the added horsepower with a higher sone rating. They have also begun to offer the K series hood since a 6 inch tall hood is common in smaller homes and apartments. They re-designed there blower to sit laterally to give you 250 CFM in a smaller 6 inch tall hood. This K series hood is a great replacement for the kitchen with a smaller space requirement.  It has a higher sound rating at 7.4 sones then the 9 inch tall vent a hoods with a single blower at 5.4. They have always offered the remote blower ( roof mounted blower ) even though this system is known to be louder than the internal blower and less efficient. Lastly the manufacturer has begun to offer ARS filter-less hoods with the release of the PDAH14-K and the CWEAH6-K models added to their ever expanding catalog.  These models feature a new spin on the filterless style hoods we have seen from other manufacturers in the past.  These systems are for people with installation scenarios that make it impossible to install a hood that ducts the air to the exterior of your home. The new hood features a 3 stage filter system , first passing the air through a blower to separate the liquid grease, secondly it passes the air through a chamber filled with carbon pellets, and lastly it passes the air through a air filter. With these new additions to the vent a hood catalog there is a hood for any installation scenario depending on your needs.