We’ve just bought a new cooker, this one’s to go against an outside wall, and we’ve opened up the kitchen diner into a big open plan space. We’re very enthusiastic cooks: steak and chips can generate a lot of smoke/steam.
The last cooker hood we had wasn’t very powerful because it was vented through a long pipe and made a right bleeding racket, fair drowning out the Funk’n’Soul.
Looking at manufacturers’ and retailers’ websites there’s a whole load of waffle about “whisper quiet” and “64db max” and reviews contradict each other – “really quiet” “really noisy” so it’s impossible to get a real world view.

So as the forum has never let me down…who’s got a cooker hood they’d like to give me an opinion on?

The cooker is 90cm and I’ll be cutting a big hole in the wall to vent out of just under the ceiling.

I bought a Stoves HDCN601 one last year, was about £400.

It’s stated as 64db max; I don’t know how loud that is supposed to be but there’s no point in having the radio on at the same time, even at its lowest level.

Apart from that it’s great though, so I don’t mind. I’m not convinced you can have a powerful extractor fan that is whisper quiet tbh. Might be like a simpler version of Keith Bontrager’s “strong/light/cheap – pick two”.

Just make sure whatever you buy has a 6” duct and you fit a 6” rigid duct to it. So many machines perform poorly due to being fitted with 4” flexible ducting.

Check out the performance ratings of any machine you’re planning to buy; the performance rating is provided. We have been very impressed with the Blaupunkt one we fitted with our Hacker kitchen, they’re rebranded Siemens/Neff/Bosch.

I will say that the noise seems to come entirely from the ducting. I have one that’s noisy and useless, and when I disconnected the duct it made no noise at all. So the airflow is key, I think.

Good advice about the duct. Now I’ll be looking forward to the click click click of the outside vent every time there’s a bit of breeze.

You can fit an inline baffle so that you can just have an ‘open’ vent on the outside. In fact a lot of good machines have a baffle on the top of the motor.

Get one with an external fan. Much quieter. Domestic ones are available. Eg https://luxairhoods.com/kitchen-ceiling-extractors-with-external-motors-for-outside

Years ago I got a Smeg branded hood. It works OK, but if I were going again I’d be tempted to get an industrial set up with an external fan.

Edit. Probably not cheap. You could open an outside door? 15cm ducting sounds a good idea.

Yes, I like the idea of an external fan (or at least an in-line fan concealed in the ceiling) but I’m not keen on the price of those luxaires.

External fan unit extractors are over £1k and look butt ugly IMO. I’ve been fitting high end kitchens for 20 years and only fitted 2. One of them had a 200mm duct and was still pretty noisy, but god did it shift some air!

You can fit an inline baffle so that you can just have an ‘open’ vent on the outside. In fact a lot of good machines have a baffle on the top of the motor.

My recently fitted hood (was fairly cheap IIRC) has two internal flaps, but one of them seems to stick open, and so it’s really drafty!

So get a posh one, it might avoid this issue…

I have a remote fan in my kitchen – not expensive and works well.  I don’t have a hood tho just a grid in the ceiling with the fan in the ceiling void and ducted to outside.  You could get a cheap hood you like and if it does not work well enough gut it and add a remote fan or just do that to start with? the fan is a lot more powerful that a ordinary cooker hood

I also have one of these in my rental flat – its ducted with a very short duct to the outside – under a metre and works surprisingly well for the cost and IMO looks fine.  they do a 60cm wide one as well.  Its OK for noise until its on the high setting but still not that bad.

https://www.diy.com/departments/cooke-lewis-clcgs90-inox-stainless-steel-curved-cooker-hood-w-90cm/1769302_BQ.prd

Ooohhh, interesting. Doing a refurb and bought a ‘quiet’ cooker hood with brushless motor. Suspected (as confirmed above) that the air movement makes the noise so have bought some 6” rigid ducting (Kitchen fitter balked at it saying it was overspecced but I’m a process engieer so come at me with your laminar flow arguments… 😉 none of it fitted yet though so have no idea how noisy it actually is. Hood is made by Luxair BTW. Interestingly, the main reason I bought a brushless motor was energy consumption, can’t remember exactly but for the same air flow rate the energy consumption was less than a third of their non brushless motor models.

TJ

You could get a cheap hood you like and if it does not work well enough gut it and add a remote fan or just do that to start with? the fan is a lot more powerful that a ordinary cooker hood

This is what I did … in fact got a free extractor off (I think) gumtree that had failed. Gutted it and resprayed in “appliance paint” and fitted an industrial centrifugal fan I already had (previously used for drying out after a leak) wasn’t dirt cheap but from memory £40-£50 ??

Its controlled by a plug in variable controller (about £15) which I should get found to integrating into the hood.
Pump is mounted outside under the eaves .. and power goes from whisper quiet normal use to hurricane at about 50%..
The pump is way over specced as its repurposed but if I was doing it from scratch I’d use a much lower capacity one as are easily found in air pumps for boats. (I have one of those in the van and its controlled by a 12v LED dimmer)