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Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!burl!ulysses!allegra!mit-eddie!godot!harvard!seismo!brl-tgr!wmartin
From: wmartin@brl-tgr.ARPA (Will Martin )
Newsgroups: net.consumers
Subject: Re: Need info on Range Hoods
Message-ID: <5512@brl-tgr.ARPA>
Date: Tue, 30-Oct-84 10:31:49 EST
Article-I.D.: brl-tgr.5512
Posted: Tue Oct 30 10:31:49 1984
Date-Received: Wed, 31-Oct-84 06:28:33 EST
References: <1768@inmet.UUCP>
Organization: Ballistic Research Lab
Lines: 41

> There are two kinds of range hoods.  One kind vents to the outside.
> This kind works.  But the stove has to be against an outside
> wall and you have to cut a hole through it.  The other kind vents
> back to the kitchen through a filter.  You have to replace the
> filter every once in a while.  My apartment (11 years old when I
> moved in) has this kind of range hood.  I don't know where
> to get a new filter.  When I turn on the range hood it smells.
> Probably nobody ever changed the filter.  I don't use the hood.

Just thought I'd mention, if you didn't realize it, that the range hoods that
have an outside vent also use a filter. (At least some, like mine, do.) This
isn't to "clean" the air processed through the hood; it's to trap suspended
grease particles, which would otherwise build up in the vent tube and create 
a fire hazard.

This means that, every now and then, you have to remove this filter (usually
a simple task -- mine is held in place by a spring-and-groove arrangement)
and wash it thoroughly in hot sudsy water. They are usually made of some form
of metal mesh and will stand repeated washings. However, they are also
rather flimsily constructed. Mine is a thin aluminum channel frame around
a sandwich of wire mesh and a tangle of metal strips (sort of like aluminum
linguini). If you wash this vigorously, the channel bends and lets the raw 
edges of the aluminum mesh slip out. It is then a tedious task to get the
whole thing back together. Eventually, after a decade or so, the thing will
probably fall apart. And, of course, by then the manufacturer of the hood
and the dealer from which you got it have disappeared into corporate heaven.

The moral of this cautionary tale is to buy at least one extra filter unit
WHEN YOU BUY THE RANGE HOOD. (If you got your hood when you bought your house,
as we did, and it was installed by the previous owners, you are probably
out of luck.) If the dealer doesn't or cannot supply extra filters, that's
probably a good reason not to buy that brand or model of range hood!
(If you are buying the kind with disposable, non-reusable filters, buy
a 20-year supply! [Can you be SURE you can find these a decade hence?])

Don't wory about having too many; if you sell the house or condo, you 
include what's left with the range hood.

Will Martin

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