Are they all noisy and, pun intended, suck. Ours makes a racket and removes hardly anything.
Any obvious improvements we can make or is this as good as it gets?

Ceramic bearings?

You’ll need deep pockets for top end ones. Try Elica, they cover most ends of the market.

Some people take stealthy photos like this (without being noticed)

and this

They are Quiet Ex Tractor Fans 😀

This is why I love this forum

I reckon most peoples issues with extractor fans are from poor ducting. When I used to sell kitchens I’d see builders make complex ducting runs so they could get a hob and extractor in the best place to “look good”. Long runs with bends and diameter reductions increase back pressure and can make a decent extractor perform very poorly.
My new extractor fan will be going in soon – I could have made my life easier by using more ducting but opted instead to core drill through 1m of brick and stone to get the ducting straight out behind the extractor.

150 dia ducting as short and minimal bends or fittings.

External or remote fan motor is another option but that starts to get £££

I’d love an old farm kit as it might shift more air than the one I have. Ducting through the wall just above the fan via a flexible pipe, which could be part of the issue I guess. Liking the remote fan option though.

yep, shortest duct run possible is vital.
Ours has a 90 degree bend on top of the motor, then it is straight out through the wall.

We insulated the inside of our cooker hood (900mm stainless thing) with self-adhesive lead-flashing, is quietened it down considerably.

The more expensive extractor hoods do tend to be quieter.
The dB level quoted for our Rangemaster is noticeably less than the level for the generic ‘Screwfix’ hoods.
(the dB level is usually listed somewhere)

My Rangemaster hood is much louder than my Bosch one, both identical installations, one 90deg smooth bend and straight out 150mm.

Looking at one or possibly two of these in our new kitchen. We can’t run to a £700 neff!

External

Running a Neff hood with 150mm ducting (manufacturer receommended).

The builders had left us with 110mm flexi tumble dryer ducting and a length of soil pipe 👿

I ripped that out and expanded the core hole using a wooden template (as obviously the core drill had nothing to centre on) then installed a straight length with a stainless steel flexi to go down to the hood.

Just purrs along, 1 is good for removing steam and 2 or 3 if the grill is going further along, none are particularly noisy and a hell of a lot better than trying to squeeze it through smaller diameter ducting.

Hardly any of them seem ducted to outside, the fitters just set them to recirculate. Bet they only bother connecting them to a vent if specifically requested, and only then if the customer is happy to pay the additional cost. I’ve seen plenty on outside walls but no vent outside

Got a Zanussi in our current house. It’s utttelry, utterly crap. Lots of noise for no output. Non-return valves bang and clatter all the time, trim is like rolled-flat bean cans.

My mum and dad have a fancy Neff unit. It’s ok, but still nowhere near as good as their old Gaggenau which appeared to have been made from sawn up Tiger tank parts. It lasted 30 years with no maintenance other than cleaning before they finally succumbed to nagging and bought a new kitchen.

Oh, meant to say, I got all my ducting and fittings from DuctStore. So far so good, the flappy cowl looks as good as stainless should, bit grubbly but nothing a wipe down wouldn’t solve if I actually cared. Good at keeping draughts out and does stay shut.

We use one of these Neff hoods. As said fairly unobtrusive.

Has anyone got one of the Bora ones that Sagan advertises (badly)? I can’t see how they can work well unless super-powerful (and therefore noisy).

Replaced an inline bathroom duct fan over xmas – via extractorfanworld – they even had a tv channel.

Life doesn’t get any sweeter https://www.extractorfanworld.co.uk/

Anyhow – the kit arrived, was easy to install and sucks way more dampness out of the room than previous version.

Is it not better to use a hood with fan vented outside to catch greasy steam quicker before it settles and sticks to top surfaces rather than just having a fan on the wall?

We’ve got a Siemens one that seems as though it could suck a cricket ball through a hosepipe, especially on “power mode” (loudish). Modes 1-3 relatively quiet.

Mind you it’s not ducted anywhere and I (wrongly) assumed it come fitted with a carbon filter from the factory.. so really all I have is an expensive device for sucking shite in the bottom and spitting it straight oot the top (albeit with great effectiveness).

The light on it is pretty good mind.

On a related topic…I wondered if anyone had a problem with air flowing in from outside from their extractor? We have ours mounted directly on the wall with minimal flexible hose but we get a hell of a breeze coming in at times – and can’t help feeling the room loses heat through it.

CJK

As I said I have a flap on the linked outside cowl that stops exactly that, it has a neoprene pad on the back so as to form a weak seal but its enough.

Squirrelking – thanks for the tip and sorry for not having read your post correctly – I’ll click your link. CJK

No worries, wasn’t having a go 🙂

As above – Keep the bend radius as large as possible and the rest of the ducting as straight and as short as possible. This may mean that when planning the kitchen you have to adjust where the hob is… The more efficient the airflow and the quieter it will be. It also means that on a minimal setting it will out perform a badly ducted extractor on full power.
We bought a Bosch extractor from Appliences Online (three years ago). It’s great and only gets put onto full power when the Wife is cremating something. We bought it based upon the decibel level thinking that we’re more likely to use it if it’s quiet. Our last one was a recirculating design and sounded like we lived next to Heathrow when it was on full power. The new quieter one gets used all the time because when it’s on, you can still hold a conversation!

They are all noisy, and despite having short ducting runs will not such up all the steam from cooking so appear to be useless, however when you check the filter its always saturated with grease, so obviously not as useless as they seem.

Because of positioning our current one doesn’t duct to outside and even that seems to collect a lot of grease in the filter. Without it all that grease would be settling on other surfaces.