ᐅ Exhaust Air vs. Recirculation in a Mechanical Ventilation with Heat Recovery System

Thanks, Bratac. I’ll look into whether the Flowstar wall vent would be suitable for us and check which companies offer core drilling services.

Our house is already finished; we have been living here for almost 1.5 years. We would probably need to remove the upper kitchen cabinets to have the drilling done, and then maybe repaint the kitchen wall because the drill might damage the wallpaper.
The house has a cavity wall construction, brick veneer and aerated concrete with insulation (wall thickness 44.5 cm (17.5 inches)). Let’s see if it’s that easy to drill through.

Having the windows tilted open or the patio door open wouldn’t bother me much. I’m not much of a gourmet cook who spends hours in the kitchen, so the heat loss from open windows would be minimal.
I wouldn’t mind the short-term negative pressure either since I’m used to it anyway, as we had negative pressure indoors for months during winter with the controlled mechanical ventilation system because of a software bug.

Thanks again for your report.

The wallpaper will definitely be damaged when drilling. However, if the contractor uses a good vacuum cleaner, you still won’t need to repaint. The "frayed" hole will be hidden by the extractor hood. The core drilling probably takes about 15 minutes and costs between 100 and 200 euros.

Does the mechanical ventilation system fail to remove cooking odors from the kitchen quickly enough?
If the exhaust of the mechanical ventilation system is not located directly above the cooktop, there should be no problem with grease entering the system, right? It is probably more difficult with closed kitchens, but with an open kitchen it should work, correct?

Knallkörper schrieb:

Energy losses caused by the range hood are hardly significant. What really matters is that moisture and odors are vented directly outside, rather than having to be manually aired out or removed by the controlled ventilation system.

Is that really insignificant? Approximately 800 m³ (28,250 ft³) of heated air are blown outside every hour, which is about twice the air volume of a 150 m² (1,615 ft²) house.

DragonyxXL schrieb:
Is this really a joke? Approximately 800 m³ (28,250 ft³) of heated air is blown outside every hour, which is about twice the volume of a 150 m² (1,615 ft²) house.

Good thing air is such a poor heat storage medium!

In addition, the range hood usually runs for no longer than 20 minutes. In our case, it’s typically only about 5 minutes, just for the duration of frying. Deep frying is only done outside the house. Based on gut feeling, only an exhaust system makes sense for us.