Stove/Range Ventilation Hood Question

Over the years I have seen boats with and without ventilation hoods over the stove. In general what are your thoughts on having one aboard a live aboard boat? I'm not concerned with power usage, installation, or any of the technical stuff. Just looking at good reason for or against having one.


My for having one is to remove some humidity. Also to keep air flowing through the galley to help remove some heat in the summer, and help remove some cooking smells.


My against is having another protrusion through the hull and possible grease stains around the vent on the outside of the hull. However, the hood I had in one of my mobile homes had the SS restaurant type cassette filters and it never left stains on the outside siding. The filters were easy to clean as well. This would be the type I would install.

If you have room for one and a path to the outside for the venting, go for it. I don’t see any downside but there would be positives to having one.

You nailed the upside. also provides a nice light. Downsides is that it’s almost impossible to buy one that actually does anything useful. They are all poorly spec’d rv units.

For my gallery remodel last year I only found one 12v unit with decent specs. Mfg by Dometic, but not sold in the US. Eventually got a shady dealer in the UK to ship me one. Cost way more than it should and took months to get.

So good luck finding one worth having!

Perhaps stay away from marine or RV units. Purchase a 600mm European unit without the fan. Then install a 12v inline blower in the cabinet above. Remote. Would give more flexibility for mounting and venting.

As long as there's space, I'd say it's worth having. Even if it's not super effective, it'll still help a lot with humidity and smells while cooking.

If I were considering one, I wouldn't limit myself to the marine or RV units. It's very common to have an inverter on the boat. Why not get a 120 VAC unit and run it off the inverter like I do my refrigerator.

Ted

O C Diver said:

If I were considering one, I wouldn't limit myself to the marine or RV units. It's very common to have an inverter on the boat. Why not get a 120 VAC unit and run it off the inverter like I do my refrigerator.

Ted

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Not a bad idea, particularly for anyone with an electric stove. I still fail to understand the logic on my boat of having a mediocre design, 12v powered stove hood when the stove is electric and requires 120v available to use it...

An alternative we prefer is an over the range microwave that has a range vent fan built in, operable separately from the microwave function. Had that on our old Hatteras and our current home. We are avid, and often smokey cooks and couldn't imagine not having a vent. Though on some boats, there is an easy to open hatch right overhead, and/or adjacent portlights which can work well.

I designed my own. Had the local sheet metal co. Make it and installed a bilge blower. I added a resistor to two way toggle switch so I could have hi and low speed.

I'm building the boat. I can configure everything the way I want to. The hood I have is for a 30 inch wide range. The fan is 8 inches but the vent pipe is 9 inches and steps down to 6 using a cone shape. It uses round sheet metal type AC/heating duct to direct air outside of the house. I can change that orientation to straight up if I need to. I could also change the fan but it is located inside the hood itself and is accessed by removing the filters. It makes for a tighter installation I think. I don't know the CFM rating. I'm not sure if it has one. The fan wattage was 500 watts. This unit doesn't have light in it. The hood is currently packed away. I've been moving things around between my outbuildings so I can move the buildings to a better place on my property. Can't do boat work because suppliers are down so may as well do property maintenance.

ben2go said:

I don't know the CFM rating. I'm not sure if it has one. The fan wattage was 500 watts.

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500 watts?

Thats 4+ amps 120 VAC or 40+ amps 12 VDC. How many times per minute will that evacuate the air inside your galley? As A comparison, a 4" bilge blower has a 200 CFM rating. It will evaluate a room 7' x 8' x 7' every 2 minutes.

Ted

When rebuilding Oz one of our goals was to decrease the humidity inside the boat. This was especially important because we cruise 4-5 months of the year in the temperate rainforest of SE AK and like to have guests and like to cook with propane. To help reach that end we installed a small (I believe it is 24") Broan 120v outside ducted range hood. In 14 years no problem and glad we did it. We also installed 9 double pane windows for all openings that didn't have sliders, hydronic heat and a high volume bilge fan in the head. So glad we did.

Tator

This is on my to-do list. Following !!
We have a 12 volt unit in our small RV. Does a fine job. Noisey but it works.
RV has a propane cooktop/oven and the boat has just the cooktop.

ghost said:

For my gallery remodel last year I only found one 12v unit with decent specs. Mfg by Dometic, but not sold in the US. Eventually got a shady dealer in the UK to ship me one.

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I've been trying to get someone to ship me one that may be (?) the same one! I don't know if the shady dealer is better than nothing but.... any tips? Or anyone else? I've seen it sold in the UK and Australia (tried both, but obviously not every possible source).

(BTW the ones I liked are models Dometic CK-150 (recessed) or CK-155 (more usual exposed hood style}. What I particularly liked about them is the fan is part of the "roof top" chimney/cap piece.)

O C Diver said:

500 watts?

Thats 4+ amps 120 VAC or 40+ amps 12 VDC. How many times per minute will that evacuate the air inside your galley? As A comparison, a 4" bilge blower has a 200 CFM rating. It will evaluate a room 7' x 8' x 7' every 2 minutes.

Ted

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Yeah something about like that. Like I said, it's and older mobile home unit. It does use a bit of electricity. I don't know the CFM rating. The hood is locked away in storage. It was pretty strong when it was in the mobile home. I am 5'8" tall and the unit was just above my head at maybe 6'. It had to be pretty powerful to suck air from nearly 30" beneath it. The fan isn't a concern as that can be changed easily.

I'm planning to use a small 30" induction cook top with the hood, if I use the hood. I make a custom built hood and use the filter assemblies.


The cooktop in the link is for reference and the one I am planning to install. It's 40 amps max at 208/240 on the spec sheet. I won't ever use all four burners. At best I'll use the largest by itself or the two smaller ones. I won't be entertaining enough people to use all the burners at once, myself and a mate at best.



https://www.amazon.com/GE-PHP9030DJ...377cb8a6e47aa92f277ae033868d13&language=en_US

Don't bother with the Dometic 12v RV Charcoal unit. I experimented with one before returning it. It was not able to cope with steam from a pot of boiling pasta water. I bet it only reduced the steam build up inside by ~20%. Windows were still fogged up.

Frosty said:

I've been trying to get someone to ship me one that may be (?) the same one! I don't know if the shady dealer is better than nothing but.... any tips? Or anyone else? I've seen it sold in the UK and Australia (tried both, but obviously not every possible source).

(BTW the ones I liked are models Dometic CK-150 (recessed) or CK-155 (more usual exposed hood style}. What I particularly liked about them is the fan is part of the "roof top" chimney/cap piece.)

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The CK 500 is the one I got.

I should have been clearer in my previous post. The Dometic CK2000 is the one that did not work well for me, as it has no possibility for external exhaust. I suspect a model CK500, with the external exhaust, would have worked just fine, if I'd been willing to cut a hole. So far, I have not come to the point where I want to do this. Workaround solution, for now, is to open some doors/windows while cooking.

The P.O. owner installed a hood and fan before I got the boat. It vents straight up into a storage compartment under a seat on the F.B. I guess it would be a simple operation to vent it out of the storage area but we have never used it. Most of the cooking on our boat is a quick on and off, never use the oven. Steaks, burgers, chops, etc are done out back on the gas grill.

pete

IRENE has an exhaust fan drawing from above the range (no hood or light). We use it every day when there is heat, moisture, or propane use in the galley - dish washing, cooking, baking, brewing coffee. We would miss it if it were not there.

ghost said:

The CK 500 is the one I got.

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Thanks for mentioning the model. I wonder why these are not available in the US? They are already 12 volts. North American RV models were total clunkers in comparison.

110v units would be an option, but if you are trying to match the footprint of a marine stove, gets difficult. Overhead microwaves are a great idea, but pretty much none match the marine stove footprint and in my case they were too tall for the small space I had.

Of all the things in my gallery remodel, I probably did more research on the stupid hood vent.

I’m happy with the unit I got, it exhausts straight up rather nicely, the light is effective too. But if I ever have to “return” it or get parts, it’s going to be a headache.

I had a custom hood with grease traps built. I use a 4" bilge blower with a rheostat to control the speed. I can close off the vent when not needed to save heat in the winter. When the blower gets too dirty I buy another.
No hood means cooking fumes and vapors thruout the boat and more cleaning.

Well, I guess I can throw my 2 cents in here. I went through this when we converted out electric stove to a propane stove. We have lived aboard for the past 10 years and have used the range hood pretty much every day of that time.



There was no provision for a range hood on our boat when we bought it. I bought a stainless steel RV range hood since it was the appropriate size and vented out the back (rather then the top). I removed the original noisy, next-to-useless fan and plumbed some aluminum round ducting to the engine room and added a 12-volt squirrel cage blower, a bilge blower actually, to the end of that pipe. The exhaust then exits via the engine room vent.


This has worked for us and I think something similar would work for you. I personally wanted to stay with 12-volt since that is primary power on the boat. I have an inverter but rarely use it.

Stove vent

We liveaboard - our setup is propane stove with Microwave above the stove. Perhaps is where we live (San Diego) but even in the winter when the boat is closed up, I don't recall excess moisture being an issue when cooking. Boiling water for pasta etc. never seemed to put enough moisture in the boat. If I do use the vent on the microwave it's setup to put the vented air back into the boat. I know you can configure the microwave vent to vent back into the boat (in our case) or have the vented air exit the back of the microwave to a duct. When I replaced our microwave, the PO had the microwave vent into the engine room.
If moisture was an issue while cooking, I would open the head door (which has a solar powered vent running all the time) or crack open a window.

Best of luck!

Gregg

Stove vent

As a former live aboard on a a trawler, and previously a sailboat, I can say that a vent is not just a nice thing, but necessary to keep your boat from smelling like whatever you cooked in the last week. The smells also sink into all your nice upholstery and bedding.
Beside the stove there was a cabinet. And into the stove side of that cabinet, way up close to the ceiling, there was a 4” SS flat vent cover Inside the cabinet there was a fan which exhausted to the outside of the boat. The outside hole was covered with a clamshell, angled a little bit to not funnel water inside when the boat was underway. The switch was installed on the bottom of the cabinet, so all wiring was invisible, and the power came off a nearby receptacle.
More than once, there was smoke or searing happening in my frying pan, and my fan arraignment sucked it right out. Leaning the cabinet face was easy with any wood cleaner. And nothing can get back in the cabin past the fan itself.

The exterior exhaust version is great for having more control over your environment at the flick of a switch. It makes sense to have an actual exhaust for the reasons noted on your first post (1). I like the exhaust to exit the side, High, with a shield over the port. No stains that way and the port through the wall is protected from all.

I wonder why we don't see Fletner vents here in the US. They are all over europe.
https://www.flettner.co.uk/applications/boat-ventilation/
I'm not sure it would handle the heat of a stove exhaust, but probably would since it cools off quite a bit as it leaves the stove.

Lepke, if your blower (squirrel cage) gets too gummed up with grease and dust, put it in a barbecue without the motor) and cook off the grease and dust. Then take compressed air to blow the carbon off. Assumption that the fan cage is metal. If it is plastic, don't BBQ it

Unless vented outside the vents are not worth much. Have had six boats in the past 25 years and none of them have had kitchen vents.