Venting A Condo Stove Hood To The Outside

One thing about living in the middle of a renovation is that you get to see exactly how things work in your space before you make any major decisions.

Our condo is small, but it has "open concept".  While the open concept approach makes a space feel larger, it can have a few drawbacks.  Anything that you cook in the kitchen is going to drift into the other living spaces.  Good ventilation is important in an open concept.  I quickly found this out while boiling a pot of water for pasta and had to open the balcony door to let the steam escape.

Here is what the kitchen looked like when we purchased the foreclosure.

As you can see, the microwave was an after-thought to the space.  Unfortunately, like many apartment/condo units, our kitchen was not vented to the outside.  The microwave acted as a hood to recirculate air from the cooktop.  Most over the range microwaves now come with filters to trap grease and dirty air, but we enjoy cooking and the space is so small that I really wanted to vent to the outside.

There are a few things to consider before trying to run vent ducts in an established condo or apartment building.  You will need to determine where the vent duct will run inside the unit and where will it exit to the outside.

Lucky for us, Al had done some poking around in the ceiling when we were taking out the fireplace insert and found there was good space separating our unit from the upstairs unit.  He was confident that we could run the vent duct from the hood into the ceiling and across the unit to the outside.  Another plus for us is that our unit has an enclosed balcony or porch.  The duct could exit the building from the ceiling of the porch.  This way, it would be barely visible and not interfere with the exterior of the building. I had read that some apartments in NYC run their vents out a window like an air conditioning unit.  I thought that was also a clever idea.

Al gained access to the ceiling by cutting a hole in the sheet rock inside the area where he removed the fireplace insert.

Our plan is to create a media wall with storage in this vast hole, but for now it comes in handy to gain access to the ceiling space.

There was a straight shot from the kitchen to the balcony for the duct with only a few HVAC ducts currently in the space.

A 4 inch expandable, aluminium vent duct was used to vent to the outside.

One hole was cut in the kitchen ceiling and the duct was "fished" to the opening at the fireplace.

Another hole was cut in the balcony ceiling and "fished" to the middle where the two ducts were connected.
The outside duct was capped with a self opening/closing vent cover when the fan is in use.

For the kitchen side of the vent, we had a few options.  We could either stay with the microwave over the range or install a vent hood.  Since space is limited, we decided to stick with the microwave over the range.  The set up for the range is electric.  Electric cooktops need about 400 CFMs for good ventilation.  There are a few microwaves out there that offer 400 CFM fans.  For many reasons, however, we went with the Fridgidaire Gallery series for appliances.  The microwave with this package has a 350 CFM fan.  I just make sure that I turn it on a few minutes before I need it to get the air flowing in the right direction.


Al installed a few cabinets (more about cabinets in a separate post) and hung the microwave.  Since he used a round vent duct, he had to have an adapter to fit the microwave to the duct.

The apparatus takes up most of the cabinet, but is hidden from view by the cabinet doors.

I should let you know that we did take our new cabinetry to the ceiling.  This allowed us raise the microwave and made the kitchen ceiling feel much higher.  The microwave hood is positioned 25 inches from the cooktop.  This measurement is important because if you get the hood to high, it will loose effectiveness.

Now our condo kitchen hood is vented outside!! It works great and there is hardly any steam while I'm cooking.  I can't imagine it any other way!! :-)