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[russellfl]

Hi, can anyone advise?

I have an electric oven & hob but no cooker hood. There is a socket installed already and a CH just needs plugging into it. The kitchen has a 600mm bridging unit above the hob. can anyone suggest what type of cooker hood I would need to slot under the bridging unit?

Cheers

[kbrownie]

The bridge will be 600mm (I guess?) so yo require a visor hood for extraction.

[ericmark]

The cooker hood is required with gas to remove moisture produced when gas burns. Not the steam from cooking but combustion produces from burning gas. Where other open flue appliances are used in the house often a heat recovery system rather than plain extractor is required so as not to suck flue gases into the house. One reason why I would not use gas to cook with although with gas the built in safety will normally switch off a gas appliance where the depression in the house it too great. Solid fuel is the real problem.

However with electric cooker hobs are not really required. Often only a carbon filter type is fitted with no extraction as such. With the more expensive induction hob with auto boil/simmer even less need for a cooker hood.

So although at moment electric question has to be will it remain electric? If so carbon filer type is OK. If however you may install gas then next question is are there any open flue devices in the house. In other words not a balanced flue. If the answer is no then plain extractor type can be used but if the answer is yes specially if using a solid fuel fire then a heat recovery system needs to be installed.

I know many don't follow the rules but if you do break them at least know you are breaking them and do things like extra CO2 detectors to counter the problems.

[russellfl]

Thanks for the info, It looks like my village will be getting gas soon so I have gone ahead and bought a visor CH as I prefer to cook with gas. The only thing that confuses me is that t bearing in mind the casing is metalhe mains flex comes without an earth wire, is this normal?

[ericmark]

One can get double insulated stuff which still has loads of metal. Should be a double square sign to show double insulated.

My son and daughter both use gas to cook with. Think down to price they could not afford a proper induction hob. Gas is much slower then an induction hob but faster than the old electric hobs. Gas also produces moisture as it burns making house damp unless using an extractor and with extractor you are throwing away loads of heat and central heating has to work harder.

With the modern induction hob the only advantage gas has is when using a wok. The wok for electric is just too heavy. However there was when the older hobs were used a move to touch controls but with induction the hob is fast to react so like gas no need to touch pan when something starts to boil just turn it down. But the touch controls are often too slow needing multi-touches and so with induction there is a need to return to knobs to be able to use the fast reaction time.

Most of the complaints about induction hobs are not about the hob but the daft touch controls that some have.

I did do the kettle boiling test with gas and induction. Filled kettle to mark and poured contains into pan then refilled. Then switched both on together. Kettle was 2.8kW the induction hob 3kW and the gas 5.8kW the electric kettle was faster than gas hob by a large margin but equal to the induction both boiled at the same time.

Original went to electric for safety but now would not consider gas. Gas is slow and dangerous, open flames, and pour pan support, harder to clean, and you need extractor and by time you consider the heat sent outside with the extractor far more expensive to run.

I do use gas for heating with balanced flue and boiler in garage it's the best way. But not for cooking.