Ducting range hood in apartment block

yvas · Oct 23, 2006 12:47 pm

Your valued advice please....
We have an apartment with tentants that do lots of cooking and it gets very steamy. The range hood is a recirculating one and does not do the job well at all. The apartment is on the second floor and only has the roof above it, and is the last one on the edge of the block. We were thinking of ducting the range hood and perhaps taking out a brick (or 2) from the external wall to duct it outside. I assume I will need approval from the body corp etc but am not sure who to get to do this work for us or how to proceed. Any advice??? The steam is really making the apartment smelly....

Thanks.

Michelle · Oct 23, 2006 7:54 pm

Ducting to the outside is the standard way to go now; no longer can we fill our roof cavities with the grease and slime, as it can fuel a fire if one starts!

Get an electrician in they should be able to help you. If not a builder.
But a couple of the guys on this forum are really good. Wait till they answer your question. They may do better than me.

I can imagine the smell going on… not to mention the damage to the paint work soon!

Good luck!

Strumer · Oct 24, 2006 6:46 am

This sounds like a job for...DUCTMAN!

Seriously, what you want to do is a great idea and is not too hard to do either.

You are definitely going to have to talk to your body corporate about it, but that might not be such as bad thing, they might all want to do it and you can get a builder in.

Michelle is spot on about the venting to the roof issue - the duct needs to keep going until it finds freedom.
This is not a very difficult job and if you are a bit handy you can do most if not all the work yourself.
There are no trade licensed operations involved in installing the required ducting to vent a rangehood into the ceiling.
Similarly, in the roof space you can run your duct across the ceiling supports to the wall or up to the roof.

Fitting the duct off will probably be the trickiest.
Venting through a roof is a routine job but can be a bit complicated sometimes.
Venting through a wall by creating an aperture is pretty straightforward. Although I don't know how difficult it might be to get access to the outside of this hole to cover the vent with some sort of grating - which will be required.

Definitely go for it if you can - your tennant will love you for it.

Earl
Industrial Designer

yvas · Oct 24, 2006 1:02 pm

Thank you to the both of you for your advice. I'm just waiting for the body corp to get back to me with the verdict and then I will have to organise it from there. The property is in Hawthorn, Melbourne if anyone can give me a price guide or is interested in taking it on.

Thanks again.

designmarc · Oct 25, 2006 9:00 pm

Job is usually carried out by a plumber and can easily be routed to atmosphere via through roof or exiting sideways through external wall.

When exiting sideways, a modular plastic duct tube is usually used as these have a very low profile (60-65mm) and run along top of adjacent wall cabinets to exit point. This is usually hidden by the fitting of plaster bulkhead.