Range hood installation
Range hood installation is the one kitchen appliance job that is mostly carpentry and ductwork rather than plumbing or wiring. The hood itself hangs in twenty minutes. The duct route, the cabinet modification and the hole through the outside wall are what the visit is actually made of. It sits inside our kitchen repair service, and it is the job homeowners most often underestimate.
Service family Kitchen repair
Scheduling Monday through Friday, 8 a.m. to 4 p.m.
Service area Six counties across Southeast Michigan
Phone (734) 540-0347
What a range hood has to do
Capture the grease, steam and combustion products coming off a cooking surface and move them outside the house. Everything else is styling. A hood that is too small, mounted too high or ducted through six feet of flexible pipe with three bends will not do it, whatever the rating on the box says, and your cabinets will show the grease within a year.
Ducted and recirculating
A ducted hood sends the air outside. A recirculating hood pushes it through a charcoal filter and back into the room, which removes some odour and none of the moisture or heat. Ducted is worth the extra work in almost every case. Recirculating is the honest answer for an interior island in a condominium where no route to the outside exists.
Where our work stops and a licensed trade starts
Mounting, cabinet work, duct runs, the exterior cap and connecting to power that already exists are ours. The list below belongs to a licensed electrical or heating contractor.
- Adding a receptacle, junction box or a new circuit
- Panel work, breaker changes and service upgrades
- Any connection to a gas appliance or a gas line
- Make up air systems tied into the heating equipment
- Anything needing a municipal permit and an inspection
Sizing, and the number that matters
The hood should be at least as wide as the cooking surface and ideally three inches wider on each side, because steam and grease rise outward as well as up. For airflow, a rough working figure is a hundred cubic feet per minute for every ten thousand British thermal units of burner output. A big gas range needs a serious hood, and a small electric cooktop does not.
The duct route, and why it decides the price
The shortest straight run to the nearest exterior wall or up through the roof is the good answer. Every elbow costs you the equivalent of several feet of straight duct, and a long run with multiple bends turns a powerful hood into a loud one that moves very little. We look at the route before we quote, because the route is the job.
What gets checked before we start
- Cooking surface width and burner output
- The shortest available duct route and its bends
- Cabinet depth above the range and what has to be cut
- Existing power, and whether the hood can reuse it
- The exterior wall material where the cap will land
Through the wall, through the cabinet, through the roof
An exterior wall behind the range is the easiest route and the cheapest. Up through the cabinet above, into the joist space and out the side wall is the common one in a house with a second floor. Straight up through the roof is the most expensive and the least popular, because a roof penetration is a roof penetration for the rest of the roof life.
Duct diameter and the transitions that waste it
Use the diameter the manufacturer specifies and do not reduce it anywhere along the run. A hood rated for a ten inch duct choked down to a six inch pipe behind a cabinet loses most of its capacity, and no amount of fan will recover it. Rigid smooth wall duct throughout, with sealed joints and no flexible section, is the standard we build to.
Make up air, and the caution on large hoods
A hood moving a lot of air has to pull replacement air in from somewhere, and in a tight house that means down a flue or around a door. Very high capacity hoods can need a dedicated make up air supply, which is heating and cooling work rather than ours. Where your hood choice is heading that way, we say so early and bring the right contractor in, the same boundary we draw on our outlet and switch replacement work.
Cabinet modification above the range
Most installations need the cabinet above the range cut for the duct, and often a shallower or shorter cabinet built to suit the new hood. That is joinery: a clean opening, a new bottom, edges finished and the cabinet re hung level with its neighbours. Our cabinet door and drawer repair crew does that part, which is why this job stays in house.
Chimney hoods, inserts and hoods over an island
An under cabinet hood is the simplest and the most common. A wall chimney hood removes the cabinet above it entirely and becomes the feature of the wall. An insert hides inside a custom hood surround. An island hood hangs from the ceiling, needs a route through the joists and has to be centred on the cooking surface to the inch, because everyone sees it from every angle.
Height above the cooking surface
Too high and it captures nothing. Too low and you cook with your head under it and the filters stay in the flames. Between twenty four and thirty inches above the surface suits most hoods over most ranges, adjusted for the height of the person who cooks and the manufacturer instruction. We set the height with the cook in the room rather than from a table.
Backdraft dampers and January air
Every ducted hood needs a damper that closes when the fan is off, or the duct becomes a cold air pipe pointed at your kitchen ceiling all winter. Most hoods include a basic flap at the outlet. We fit a proper damper in the run as well, and seal the duct where it passes through the building envelope as part of our draft sealing standard.
The exterior cap and the wall it sits in
The cap outside is the part that has to last thirty winters. It gets flashed and sealed into the siding rather than caulked onto the face of it, with the opening cut cleanly and the sheathing sealed behind. On a brick wall it lands in a mortar joint where possible. That detail is siding work and it is where most third party installations fail.
Noise, and the reason the old one never gets used
Nobody uses a hood that sounds like a hairdryer. Perceived noise comes from the fan speed, the duct diameter and the number of bends far more than from the price of the unit. A well ducted mid range hood on low is quieter and more effective than an expensive one strangled by a bad route. That is the strongest argument for spending the money on the duct.
The kitchen around it
Cutting a cabinet and opening a wall usually means patching and painting afterwards, so drywall repair and interior painting get scheduled with it. Where the wall behind the range is being retiled or a full kitchen remodeling project is planned, the hood and its duct get designed in at the start rather than fitted around the finish.
How long the work takes
An under cabinet hood replacing an existing ducted hood, same size and same duct, is two hours. A new duct route through a cabinet and out a side wall is a full day. A chimney hood with a new cabinet above and a fresh exterior cap is a day and a half plus paint. It pairs with bathroom exhaust fan installation on the same visit.
Book range hood installation with our crew
Tell us the range width, the burner output and which wall the kitchen backs onto, and we can usually scope the duct before we arrive. We cover Ypsilanti and the surrounding counties, and an annual home check keeps the cap and the damper working. View our Portfolio, then contact us now for a free quote.
