Fitting kitchen extractor

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Evening all

We're moving house soon, and in the kitchen there's no extractor fan above the cooker, so I want to install one. In our current property the kitchen extractor fan plugs into a socket in the wall above. There's no such socket at the new property, but it would be a relatively straightforward matter to take the feed from the wiring in the loft to the site of the extractor. I fitted a humidistat bathroom extractor fan a few years ago, taking the feed from the lighting circuit. Would the lighting circuit be adequate for the load imposed by a variable speed kitchen extractor?

Thanks in advance.
 
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I must admit I was surprised when I selected a random cooker hood to see what the power requirements were to find it not listed, but then found one where it said motor was 60 watt which is only the same power requirements as a 60 watt bulb so see no problems being powered from lights.

Odd but this house is first I have had which had an cooker hood fitted, which also is first house without gas, one would have thought cooker hoods would be standard fitments where you can use gas cooking. I find the lights in the cooker hood very handy, but rare we ever switch it on.
 
Thanks for the replies, and its good to know that I can do the work myself. Like you, Eric, I'm surprised that the power requirement for such a fan is so low. Just had a quick look myself, and the first two I came across were 80w and 75w respectively.

Personally I find a cooker hood extracting to the outside to be indispensable. Family meals are rare here because our children are now grown up, but when they do happen it entails several saucepans bubbling on the hob at once and the potential for the kitchen to rapidly turn into a steam bath, even with windows open.
 
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Personally I find a cooker hood extracting to the outside to be indispensable. Family meals are rare here because our children are now grown up, but when they do happen it entails several saucepans bubbling on the hob at once and the potential for the kitchen to rapidly turn into a steam bath, even with windows open.
I cook with electric, with an induction hob, and the kitchen never seems to be full of steam, I on the odd time turn on the extractor to remove smells, but with auto boil/simmer control with induction hob and no moisture from burning gas, kitchen is dry, however daughter uses gas, not a clue why, but she does get a damp kitchen on times, so with electric likely a carbon filter is enough, with gas needs venting to outside.

But the control switching with induction seems to be shorter than with a heating element, before induction I would note the pan would boil then stop, repeatedly as the simmer stat would switch on/off, but with the induction the time between each on/off seems much shorter, likely some semi-conductor switching device, so not worried about contacts burning, so I don't notice it switching on/off if it still does that, the control is good enough to melt chocolate direct no need for a bowl in a pan of water.

Down side is useless with a wok, but heats the kitchen less, as heat direct into pan, uses less power, auto turns off when pan removed, more precise control, and fast response as with gas no need to lift pan when milk starts to boil just turn down, (unless it has silly touch controls) and heats up faster too. Child lock on knobs, auto turns off if over temperature, etc. The other down side is my wife some times forgets to turn it off, which is OK as auto turn off, but then does same with caravan which is gas and has no safety features.
 
I cook with electric, with an induction hob, and the kitchen never seems to be full of steam, I on the odd time turn on the extractor to remove smells, but with auto boil/simmer control with induction hob and no moisture from burning gas, kitchen is dry, however daughter uses gas, not a clue why, but she does get a damp kitchen on times, so with electric likely a carbon filter is enough, with gas needs venting to outside.

But the control switching with induction seems to be shorter than with a heating element, before induction I would note the pan would boil then stop, repeatedly as the simmer stat would switch on/off, but with the induction the time between each on/off seems much shorter, likely some semi-conductor switching device, so not worried about contacts burning, so I don't notice it switching on/off if it still does that, the control is good enough to melt chocolate direct no need for a bowl in a pan of water.

Down side is useless with a wok, but heats the kitchen less, as heat direct into pan, uses less power, auto turns off when pan removed, more precise control, and fast response as with gas no need to lift pan when milk starts to boil just turn down, (unless it has silly touch controls) and heats up faster too. Child lock on knobs, auto turns off if over temperature, etc. The other down side is my wife some times forgets to turn it off, which is OK as auto turn off, but then does same with caravan which is gas and has no safety features.

Our induction hob has an externally vented hood above it. The hood was specified by Wren. When boiling pasta, most of the steam evades the hood and settles on the ceiling. We never had that with our gas hob and previous hood.
 
When water boils it is at 100°C, adding salt may increase this slightly, or using a pressure cooker, however there is no point boiling rapid in most cases, I did note when following instructions on a Vesta ready meal it did require boiling rapid at the end to reduce water content, but once I realised this, I simply added less water to start with.

As to pasta mainly use the microwave and a special pasta cooking container, so likely the steam does go into the kitchen, however the microwave is not under the hood, so goes into kitchen anyway.

Same with chip fryer, stand alone pressure cooker, air fryer, kettle, etc. Of all the steam producing items in the kitchen only the cooker is under the hood.
 
Our Neff built in deep fat fryer is directly next to the hob. The old Neff extractor was 900mm wide and did a decent job of catching the steam.

I must admit, I just throw the pasta in to boiling water and leave it to boil (with salt).

I have to admit, that I much preferred our gas hob but I do like the fact that the induction hob only takes seconds to clean.
 
personally I'd always go for a gas hob, I've always found them to be so easy to use... Bring to the boil and turn down to simmer, none of this going on and off malarky and at the end turning off the pot stops boiling. Mrs Sunray always prefers electric, the only advantage I see is ease of cleaning.

In my rental properties the tenants seem to prefer gas hobs when replacement is required.
 
Mrs Sunray always prefers electric
Mrs Sunray's mum probably had electric when she was growing up.

That's how their preference is formed.

Though women who've got induction say they're much better.
 
She may say, 1/4 the price of electricity, more controllable, hob lasts much longer than induction before replacement required, etc, etc.
She may say that, but it is not really ¼ price, she did a demo when I asked her why she boiled water in electric kettle then poured it into the pan, gas hob rated at 5.5 kW kettle rated at 2.8 kW and the kettle was twice as fast as gas hob with same amount of water, so since you use 4 times as much gas to boil same amount of water works out same price.

Also did experiment with 3 kW induction hob and 2.8 kW kettle and near enough same time.

As to controllable can turn down induction enough to only melt chocolate, try that with gas and flame goes out, so not more controllable.

As to how long they last, well our first cooker was still OK after 30 years but we wanted induction and an oven which more control, being able to set heat at sides, back, or top with and without fan, closed door grilling etc, modern electric ovens are far more controllable to old electric ovens, plus less heat escapes, idea is to cook the food, not heat the kitchen, so we changed and now some 20 year old and no problems, unlikely to find one as old as a gas cooker as although came out in 1933 (Worlds Fair in Chicago) and started to be produced around 1970, they did not become popular until around 2000, so hard to find one over 20 years old, gas cookers go back to 1830's but North sea gas conversion was late 60's so no old gas cookers are used any more as will not run on North sea gas.

However main advantage of electric is safety, no open flame, no waste products in the kitchen, auto switch off after set time, or removal of the pan, the list goes on. Only problem is a wok on an electric is too heavy, so if you use a wok, then needs to be gas.

There is a limit how much one can tilt the pan with induction, but does not need a ground base any more, but does need to be a material which is attracted by a magnet. Stainless steel does not work as non magnetic, even if it is ferrous.

In the main people who want gas are comparing it with pre-induction hob electric, mothers house has a halogen hob due to worries about affecting her pace maker, it was changed 2 months after halogen hob fitted and it seems new pace makers not affected with induction hobs or mobile telephones, seems old ones did not comply with regulations it was the pace maker at fault not the hob.

However I can understand why no one likes them, it was so slow, and I used a Lidi induction hob sitting on top of the halogen hob which had the fuse removed so could not by accident be turned on. The old electric hob was not a patch on gas, but things have moved on.

Biggest problem with electric hobs is the touch controls, knobs are far better, but it seems most have silly touch controls.
 
Very interesting discussion, thanks.

Must admit that I had to Google "induction hobs", because we've never had one. We did have an old-fashioned electric hob when we first got married, but ditched it after it started giving the missus electric shocks, and its been gas ever since. We'll stick with a gas hob for the kitchen in the new house, at least for the foreseeable future, because it's what we're used to and I'm au fait with the extraction requirements for gas.
 
She may say that, but it is not really ¼ price, she did a demo when I asked her why she boiled water in electric kettle then poured it into the pan, gas hob rated at 5.5 kW kettle rated at 2.8 kW and the kettle was twice as fast as gas hob with same amount of water, so since you use 4 times as much gas to boil same amount of water works out same price.

Also did experiment with 3 kW induction hob and 2.8 kW kettle and near enough same time.

As to controllable can turn down induction enough to only melt chocolate, try that with gas and flame goes out, so not more controllable.

As to how long they last, well our first cooker was still OK after 30 years but we wanted induction and an oven which more control, being able to set heat at sides, back, or top with and without fan, closed door grilling etc, modern electric ovens are far more controllable to old electric ovens, plus less heat escapes, idea is to cook the food, not heat the kitchen, so we changed and now some 20 year old and no problems, unlikely to find one as old as a gas cooker as although came out in 1933 (Worlds Fair in Chicago) and started to be produced around 1970, they did not become popular until around 2000, so hard to find one over 20 years old, gas cookers go back to 1830's but North sea gas conversion was late 60's so no old gas cookers are used any more as will not run on North sea gas.

However main advantage of electric is safety, no open flame, no waste products in the kitchen, auto switch off after set time, or removal of the pan, the list goes on. Only problem is a wok on an electric is too heavy, so if you use a wok, then needs to be gas.

There is a limit how much one can tilt the pan with induction, but does not need a ground base any more, but does need to be a material which is attracted by a magnet. Stainless steel does not work as non magnetic, even if it is ferrous.

In the main people who want gas are comparing it with pre-induction hob electric, mothers house has a halogen hob due to worries about affecting her pace maker, it was changed 2 months after halogen hob fitted and it seems new pace makers not affected with induction hobs or mobile telephones, seems old ones did not comply with regulations it was the pace maker at fault not the hob.

However I can understand why no one likes them, it was so slow, and I used a Lidi induction hob sitting on top of the halogen hob which had the fuse removed so could not by accident be turned on. The old electric hob was not a patch on gas, but things have moved on.

Biggest problem with electric hobs is the touch controls, knobs are far better, but it seems most have silly touch controls.
I used to do the melting chocolate thing quite often for ricicle/corn flakes cakes with the kids on our gas hob so I'm not sure where that came from. Now with ceramic hob it's impossible without a pan of water, now done with grandchildren in the microwave.

All gas appliances were converted to natural gas free of charge. A friends mother is still using her mothers 'Ideal' cooker from 1936 when they married and is one off the best cake makers I know :)looking for rubbing tummy imoji.

Miss Sunray rented a rather swish flat for a couple of years with an induction hob and cursed it everytime she used it, Mrs Sunray used it a few times and in those few times (not enough to get used to it) cursed it even more. Miss Sunray breathed a sigh of relief when moved to a house with 6 ring dual fuel aga.

In my opinion the touch controls are a health and safety issue... knock a pan of water or frying pan and the first thing you want to do is turn off the heat except it's swimming in boilinng water or fat:eek::(
 
Family meals are rare here because our children are now grown up, but when they do happen it entails several saucepans bubbling on the hob at once and the potential for the kitchen to rapidly turn into a steam bath, even with windows open.

There is normally not need for them to be bubbling furiously - a simmer is similar to a boil in temperature and allow a lid to be used. A hob fan which doesn't extract to outside is rather pointless.
 

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