Kitchen Installation: Things to Consider. Part One

Imagine that you've revealed a designer's talent in you and did your best to create a kitchen of your dream. The floor ornament ideally matches the curtain fringing, as well as the vases perfectly match the colour of the lamp. Yet, something is still missing. Kitchen comfort depends not only on your good taste and productive imagination. The air should be fresh but not cold. Materials should possess good cleaning properties, but not be toxic. Just a creative approach is surely not enough - you should study a more down-to-earth side of the question.

Breathe in a chestful of clean air.
The kitchen like no other room in the house requires fresh air. It is especially true if you enjoy cooking and spend a lot of time in the kitchen. The fragrance of grilled chicken or baked layer cake which was not aired on time quickly loses its pleasant flavor. And it is not an appetizing fragrance any more, but a bad whiff penetrating into all rooms of the house. So, if your dwelling still bears the scent of yesterday's ravioli, think, maybe there are problems with ventilation in your kitchen?

It's easy to check if the kitchen extractor works properly. Put the sheet of paper to the air diffuser: if it "adheres" to the hole, then the system is all right.

There can be various reasons of the disabled ventilation: electricity fault, the channel was littered up, or some quick bird nested there etc.

How to choose an exhaust hood.
If you want the air in the kitchen to be clean and fresh, even the best ventilation system will not be enough.

It is known that combustion residue are produced while cooking. It is not healthy to inhale them. Besides, fat and smoke is not good for kitchen furniture, ceiling and walls either. So, you should buy a kitchen exhaust hood or as the specialists call it a canopy hood.

What to choose? First, you should consider performance of the device. The cleanness of the kitchen air can be measured in figures. Multiply the room area by its height. The air should be renewed 10 times per hour according to the sanitary standards. So, let's multiply the volume by ten and we have the required performance of the kitchen exhaust hood. The index 300 m3/h is quite normal for the average kitchen of 3 ? 4 metres. If you bake and roast a lot, and like to smoke in the kitchen, you'd better take the hood with characteristics - 400 - 600 m3/hr. On the whole, you can find models from 180 to 1200 m3/hr in the kitchen appliances shops.

Secondly, you should pay attention to the size of the exhaust hood. Standard devices can be 50, 60, 90 or 120 cm wide. Anyway, the exhaust hood must be wider than the kitchen cooker. The principle factor is operating mode of the hood. We have two options: recirculation or air vent. In the latter case the exhaust hood absorbs the air and then releases it. In the first case it goes through the fat filter that refines it from small particles of smoke, ash, fat and then through angle filter that neutralizes the scents. Then the renewed air returns to the kitchen. The extracting mode, of course, is better for eliminating the kitchen scents and such a device makes less noise. You also do not have to change or wash the filters regularly. On the other hand, you don't always have the opportunity to extract the air outside.

There are also versatile hoods which combine both the modes. You can just block the out valve with the special screen (press the button or turn the handle depending on the model), and the air will not go into the pipe, but will be forwarded to the filters and then back to the kitchen.

Finally, as the exhaust hood is not a small device, you should think how it will blend with the kitchen interior.

Kitchen: don't confuse it with sauna!
What is the most humid place in the apartment? A bathroom? Not only. The climate of the kitchen may sometimes be similar to tropical. Especially if you have taken all the measures to make this room warm, but you have forgotten to make the air of normal humidity. This problem can also be solved by setting the ventilation system, as air renewal is very important for creating comfort in the kitchen. In fact you should think about the climate in the kitchen (as well as in the whole apartment).

It is not peanuts!
Beauty and comfort of the kitchen mostly depend on what you have on the floor, the walls and the ceiling.

Let's start with the bottom. It is known, that large drawings on the floor visually downsize the room and small ones visually "extend" the borders. Gloss finishing visually extends the space and matt finishing narrows it.

Kitchen flooring.
However, the main thing in selecting the floor is, of course, the material. Vinyl flooring is durable and modern. Linoleum is also firm and antistatic. Any dirt can be easily removed from it. Even if the stain is "complex", it can be removed from the floor with the solvent agent and the flooring will not be damaged. Natural linoleum is better for the kitchen as it is more ecologically safe. Natural wooden floor looks cozy and at the same time respectably.

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