Cooker Hoods Buying Guide

Cooker Hoods Buying Guide

Whether you’re looking for a stylish designer piece or a practical cooker hood, this guide is here to explain the important points about cooker hoods and to help you choose the right model for your kitchen. We will look at extraction rates, ventilation type and some important issues about design.

Kitchen cooker hoods are appliances designed to be placed above a hob/Cooker to filter the air in your kitchen. They come as either ducted or recirculation models (more about both of those later) For many people a kitchen extractor is just an afterthought but not having adequate ventilation can lead to permanent damage to your kitchen as grease can stain your paint work and builds up in hard to clean places, as well as this odours linger in your home when sufficient ventilation is not installed.

Please note: That all extraction rates on our website are quoted as unrestricted rates, this means that once ducting / charcoal filters are added, your extraction rate will change depending on what size/ length of ducting you choose to install, each bend you add to your ducting will also reduce your extraction rate, therefore the best rule to use when choosing your ducting is to use the largest, shortest and straightest run possible to achieve the best extraction rate possible for your installation. Please note this also applies to DB readings for motors, these are quoted before installation.
It is impossible for us to predict what extraction rate you will achieve as every installation is different, there are so many variants of installation that we can only advise you an unrestricted motor reading.

If air is being recirculated through the cooker hood for release back into your kitchen, it is taken through two filters: a grease filter and a charcoal filter.

All cooker hoods come supplied with a grease filter, but not a charcoal one; these can be obtained through the product page as an optional extra or there is dedicated spares and accessories section on our website.

The charcoal filter needs to be replaced every 2-3 months or every 50 hours of cooking whichever comes first, depending on how often you use your cooker hood.

The metal grease filter can either be replaced, or washed - usually in the dishwasher - if it is a permanent metal filter.

In order to maintain the motor and keep it in good conditon, we recommend to clean you metal grease filter on a monthly basis, if using charcoal filters they must be replaced every 2-3 months, by not doing this a build up of grease can solidify on the motor blades and cause your motor to malfunction over time. by cleaning/replacing the filters regulrly this will help maintain the motors life.