Hi,
I'm about to remodel our kitchen where the back wall (external wall) will be floor to ceiling tall cabinets. We're going to put an oven, built in microwave, warming draw and built in fridge freezer into the cabinets. I'm allowing space between the oven and the fridge to minimise heat exchange from the oven to the heat exchangers from the fridge.
My question is what is the best way to vent the top of the cabinets? The cabinets will be coming from IKEA which have grills to go in plinth to allow air in but as will reach the ceiling + coving there is no space for the heat to escape from.
Working on the principle that hot air rises I don't think vents in the plinth will be adequate. I've thought about putting up sealed cladding in the wall to make an air chamber so that one grill in the plinth is air in and another grill in plinth is an exhaust with some 80mm fans behind to create air flow. This may work but not sure it will be enough to remove heat from fridge freezer.
Other ideas have been more conventional with either an outside vent in the upper part of the wall, I was thinking about the ventaxia thermostatic vent which closes if the temperature goes below -5.
As our only under plinth heat exchanger (connects to central heating) is on the wall where the cabinets are going, the other idea to keep heat in the kitchen (for winter) is to vent back into the kitchen. Options here are too cut a 1cm vent into the coving to allow hot air back into the room - not sure how much benefit this will give to warming the room.
I'm thinking the external vent well be the simplest and cleanest looking solution.
Any other ideas?
As a side note i would expect the appliances to work for a while without venting, but the fridge would have to work harder as it would get little in cooler air to exchange heat with causing the compressor to run longer and work harder, bad for energy efficiency and the lifespan of the fridge. Or at least that's my expectation and reason for adding a vent of some sort.
Any help or other ideas would be greatly appreciated.
Cheers
Neil
I'm about to remodel our kitchen where the back wall (external wall) will be floor to ceiling tall cabinets. We're going to put an oven, built in microwave, warming draw and built in fridge freezer into the cabinets. I'm allowing space between the oven and the fridge to minimise heat exchange from the oven to the heat exchangers from the fridge.
My question is what is the best way to vent the top of the cabinets? The cabinets will be coming from IKEA which have grills to go in plinth to allow air in but as will reach the ceiling + coving there is no space for the heat to escape from.
Working on the principle that hot air rises I don't think vents in the plinth will be adequate. I've thought about putting up sealed cladding in the wall to make an air chamber so that one grill in the plinth is air in and another grill in plinth is an exhaust with some 80mm fans behind to create air flow. This may work but not sure it will be enough to remove heat from fridge freezer.
Other ideas have been more conventional with either an outside vent in the upper part of the wall, I was thinking about the ventaxia thermostatic vent which closes if the temperature goes below -5.
As our only under plinth heat exchanger (connects to central heating) is on the wall where the cabinets are going, the other idea to keep heat in the kitchen (for winter) is to vent back into the kitchen. Options here are too cut a 1cm vent into the coving to allow hot air back into the room - not sure how much benefit this will give to warming the room.
I'm thinking the external vent well be the simplest and cleanest looking solution.
Any other ideas?
As a side note i would expect the appliances to work for a while without venting, but the fridge would have to work harder as it would get little in cooler air to exchange heat with causing the compressor to run longer and work harder, bad for energy efficiency and the lifespan of the fridge. Or at least that's my expectation and reason for adding a vent of some sort.
Any help or other ideas would be greatly appreciated.
Cheers
Neil
