ᐅ Downdraft Vent for Cooktop in IKEA Kitchen – Is It Possible? Has Anyone Tried This?
Created on: 13 Aug 2018 13:28
S
ScoutHello Henning,
I tried to plan a cooktop with a downdraft extractor in our planned IKEA kitchen—recirculating air, to be precise!
Problems I ran into: The maximum width of a kitchen cabinet at IKEA is 80 cm (31.5 inches), with an internal width of 76.2 cm (30 inches). However, most cooktops with downdraft extractors, like those from Neff, require 78 cm (30.7 inches) inside! But in principle, it’s doable: you have to trim about 5 cm (2 inches) off the side panel of the cabinet at the top, then the cooktop fits, though with a slight visual imbalance. The Bora Basic would fit perfectly in a cabinet but is also almost the most expensive solution, and the exhaust ducting with Metod would be very complicated.
However, the cooktop takes up a lot of drawer space for the ducting—ideally 20 cm (8 inches), but at least 12 cm (5 inches) with most manufacturers. If you don’t want the air to be vented right at the base of the cooktop (at the plinth), you need a more or less thick exhaust pipe—usually a cross-section of 190 cm² (30 in²) or more. Depending on where the air is vented, these require a lot of space (bends and adapters for cross-section changes to reach the plinth area or the cabinet crown). So either you have an island with a 75 cm (29.5 inches) deep countertop on a 60 cm (23.6 inches) base cabinet, and the exhaust runs behind the drawers, or there’s little space for drawers in the cooktop cabinet because you have to route the pipes downwards and place the ducting in the plinth area; in that case, the plinth must be about 10 cm (4 inches) high for common plug-in systems instead of 7 cm (2.7 inches) as with Metod, so the countertop ends up 3 cm (1.2 inches) higher than usual!
The extractor itself costs roughly half the price of an 80 cm (31.5 inches) base cabinet depending on the system, and since it sometimes uses a few centimeters of the neighboring cabinet as well, that one might be affected too. Unfortunately, this is the best storage space in the kitchen—an 80 cm cabinet right next to the cooktop... it’s quite inconvenient but inherent to the system.
We will solve this now with a ceiling-mounted hood instead of a downdraft extractor. It hangs from the ceiling and is therefore also out of the way. With a nicer ceiling hood like the Falmec Cielo, it looks more like a piece of art or lighting than a simple kitchen appliance.
Feel free to share your kitchen plan; maybe I have another idea.
I tried to plan a cooktop with a downdraft extractor in our planned IKEA kitchen—recirculating air, to be precise!
Problems I ran into: The maximum width of a kitchen cabinet at IKEA is 80 cm (31.5 inches), with an internal width of 76.2 cm (30 inches). However, most cooktops with downdraft extractors, like those from Neff, require 78 cm (30.7 inches) inside! But in principle, it’s doable: you have to trim about 5 cm (2 inches) off the side panel of the cabinet at the top, then the cooktop fits, though with a slight visual imbalance. The Bora Basic would fit perfectly in a cabinet but is also almost the most expensive solution, and the exhaust ducting with Metod would be very complicated.
However, the cooktop takes up a lot of drawer space for the ducting—ideally 20 cm (8 inches), but at least 12 cm (5 inches) with most manufacturers. If you don’t want the air to be vented right at the base of the cooktop (at the plinth), you need a more or less thick exhaust pipe—usually a cross-section of 190 cm² (30 in²) or more. Depending on where the air is vented, these require a lot of space (bends and adapters for cross-section changes to reach the plinth area or the cabinet crown). So either you have an island with a 75 cm (29.5 inches) deep countertop on a 60 cm (23.6 inches) base cabinet, and the exhaust runs behind the drawers, or there’s little space for drawers in the cooktop cabinet because you have to route the pipes downwards and place the ducting in the plinth area; in that case, the plinth must be about 10 cm (4 inches) high for common plug-in systems instead of 7 cm (2.7 inches) as with Metod, so the countertop ends up 3 cm (1.2 inches) higher than usual!
The extractor itself costs roughly half the price of an 80 cm (31.5 inches) base cabinet depending on the system, and since it sometimes uses a few centimeters of the neighboring cabinet as well, that one might be affected too. Unfortunately, this is the best storage space in the kitchen—an 80 cm cabinet right next to the cooktop... it’s quite inconvenient but inherent to the system.
We will solve this now with a ceiling-mounted hood instead of a downdraft extractor. It hangs from the ceiling and is therefore also out of the way. With a nicer ceiling hood like the Falmec Cielo, it looks more like a piece of art or lighting than a simple kitchen appliance.
Feel free to share your kitchen plan; maybe I have another idea.
Good decision. Schüller, even with the most affordable fronts, is of higher quality and allows for much more customized designs. A downdraft extractor (also known as a built-in cooktop ventilation) looks noticeably better (this is, of course, a personal opinion) if you want to have a kitchen island. Even designer ceiling hoods never look great in my opinion—I didn’t want one either. In that case, I would rather do without the kitchen island altogether (and I say this as a strong IKEA fan... but IKEA is only moderately strong when it comes to kitchens).
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