Kitchen is the focal point of any home, and so the room atmosphere is extremely important. The atmosphere in kitchen is affected by lot of things like cooking, smell, waste heat, etc. To ensure that the food odor, heat, smoke, etc. is circulated out from the room, chimneys play an essential role.

Chimneys throw out the smoke/heat, odor, etc. through ducts. Chimneys have different suction power to suck waste heat, particles and greasy substance.

Suction power is measured in meter cube per hour. Suction power measure how much air will the chimney be able to suck out of the kitchen and throw out. How much Suction power is required, doesn’t really depend upon size of the family, which many home owners believe.

There are several factors that affect the suction power-

  • Duct size
  • Number of angles given to the ducting
  • Food preparation style
  • Design & duct style

Duct Size – The size of the duct will vary with homes. Some have 5 feet long duct while some have 10 feet or less. The suction power for every duct size will be different because the amount of power required to suck heat/smoke and particles out from home, from 5 feet duct or 10 feet duct will differ.

Number of Angles given – Many a times due to space constrain, angles or bends are given to the duct. Some may have 1 bend in the duct, some may have 2 and very rarely 3 bends are given in the duct. Similar to duct size, the suction power of chimney varies with number of bents given to duct.

Food preparation style – The suction power of kitchen hood for non-vegetarians is higher than vegetarians. This is because the food odor/ aroma while preparing non-vegetarian food is more than vegetarian food. To get rid of this food aroma/odor, higher suction power is required.

Design & duct style – The design of chimney is also an important factor to decide on suction power. Chimney are available in straight line style and decorative style. Or straight line chimney style, 700 m3/hr is required/used. For decorative one’s the suction power varies from 800m3/hr to 1200 m3/hr.

It observed that more the suction power, better is the performance of chimney, but the disadvantage here is that more noise it will make. For higher suction power chimney, a 6inch (in diameter) thick pipe is used for ducts while for lesser suction power say, 700m3/hr 4 inch thick duct pipe is used.

Usually for residential purpose 10 feet duct is installed. My suggestion to all home owners would be to ask the experts from the company for how much suction power to be used.