Drawer Cabinets For Down Draft Coooktop
- A downdraft cooktop is a normal gas, electric or induction cooktop with a built-in ventilation system. It uses proximity ventilation to attract fumes and grease during cooking. The ventilation system pulls these contaminants down and recirculates the air or pushes it out of your kitchen through ducts.
- Wolf's array of ventilation products - wall hoods, island hoods, under-cabinet vent inserts, ceiling-mounted hoods, and downdrafts - keep your kitchen bright,.
Safety is a huge part of your kitchen designAn edited version of this article appeared in the May 2011 issue of the national publication of Kitchen & Bath design news.One of the greatest challenges for a kitchen designer is to create a design that the customer appreciates aesthetically and simultaneously provides them with a functionally well designed kitchen. It’s equally difficult to just not make any mistakes. And sadly, that’s something very few kitchen designers can actually accomplish.When customers show me designs done elsewhere, I can usually rattle off 10 blatant errors before I even closely examine the floor plan. Even more alarming, many designs actually have the potential to kill. And, these same fatal designs have even won awards.In the last few years, I honestly have yet to pick up a kitchen trade magazine without a featured kitchen on either its front or back cover having major mistakes. Often they possess one of the possibly fatal design flaws listed below.
Here is my list of the 8 deadly kitchen designs that I see over and over again. Wall cabinet, spice pull out or an appliance garage too close to the cooktop or rangeKitchens with hearths or grottos are the biggest culprits with the Professional high BTU burners being mere inches from the sides of the wood cabinetry creating a fire hazard. Range too close to the windowMost building codes require a range to be a minimum of 12 inches away from a window for a number of reasons.
A fire on the stove can jump to curtains on the windows. Or a breeze from an open window can blow out the flame on a gas burner and allow gas to accumulate possibly unnoticed prior to a potential explosion. I have seen many, many, examples of designs with the range actually underneath the window. Ra nge or cooktop on the end of the runHandles of pots and pans can be left extending out in space to be flipped onto homeowners or their children.
This is usually seen all the more disastrously in high traffic areas and next to doorways where people are entering the room unprepared for the foolish design flaw. The deadly cousin or number 2 and 3. A range next to the exterior kitchen door for all the reasons listed in 2 and in 3. Wall cabinets extending out over where there is no countertop or by themselves without protective bases below themUsually this tends to be customer driven.
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Out of the need to create storage space literally everywhere in their kitchen, cabinets get put in places where someone leaning or bending over unsuspectingly can stand up and fracture their skull. I actually know of a contractor that fractured his skull this way and is now blind. This one is a little of a stretch. But today many children and adults have respiratory issues such as asthma, severe allergies, or emphysema. Placing cabinets with moldings approaching but not reaching the ceiling can create a space that is impossible to clean and yet accumulates over time inches of dust, dead skin, and dust mites. This could cause potentially fatal health reactions to those sensitive. I have seen where this is done intentionally to create a “shadow line” on the ceiling.
Once you get 3 or less inches from the ceiling, you must go all the way. Probably one of the biggest issues on the kitchen design horizon. Today’s powerful hoods coupled with tightly sealed energy efficient homes create negative pressure inside the home when the windows are closed in the winter and the exhaust fan is on. Without a heat/air exchanger or a heating system designed against negative pressure the exhaust fan will pull carbon monoxide back down the water heater exhaust, the furnace chimney, or more dramatically pull the smoke right out the customers fireplace into their home. Nearly all designers and appliance salespeople never even consider this and only in the most expensive and usually colder climate neighborhoods like Jackson Hole Wyoming are there any building codes regarding this.Just a note: 12 months after this was published Pennsylvania became one of the first States to regulate this very issue. Presently all 50 states require replacement air systems for all hoods over 400 CFM.
Drawer Cabinets For Down Draft Cooktop Parts
This one is almost no longer an issue but still exists. Customers must have GFCI outlets within 4 feet of their sink but if they have an electric range with spiral coil heating elements and the kitchen designer places the range too close to the stainless steel sink, the 110 volt outlet issue will be benign in comparison to the 220 volt range, sink, and water shocker.Kitchen design is a profession I love for many reasons including the creativity involved, the people you meet, and the sense of accomplishment when you do a good job. But, the biggest reason I love designing kitchens is that it is an incredible challenge.To answer any questions regarding the significance of today’s date (originally posted March 15th 2011):“Beware the ides of March”Shakespeare’s Julius CaesarHoping you don’t have any of these issues,Paul McAlary.
Safety iss stressed with all of our designs. We require clients to sign a waiver if they insist on the micro/vent combination and that act will often convince them how serious a mistake it will be. I withdrew from a project recently because the client insisted ttht the cooktop be moved to below the wood window.
We will not be involved with that large a mistake. He was convinced it was okay and sent me dozens of photos showing that placement. Apparently thinking that if its is published, it’s okay. Hi Jim,Considering the fact that you are in our serving area, I would encourage you to have us come out work on a design with you. Sight unseen any advice I would give you would be ill-advised since the best advice is always to have a good kitchen designer look at the job, and that is easy for you to do in this case. You will need a replacement air system installed for a 1000 CMF Hood, but the whole thing hanging over the window has the sound of someone inexperienced like an architect dabbling in kitchen design. We are here if you need us.Thanks,Paul.
I have a pretty big issue. One that i think i should get some signatures from residents in these Section 8 Apts. They’ve done inspections but i never said anything about how dangerous the kitchenettes are until now. You see the owner of this building got a $38 million loan from the California Redevelopment Committee to make the Alexandria Hotel Apts into 468 “assisted” living apartments. They made 509 and put these hideous 2 burner kitchenettes in each unit. Basically going the cheapest route possible.
Of the top of my head they couldn’t have been more than $1k a unit. (2 burners right next to the one base sink, sitting OVER the little college fridge. Its already shorted out 3 TIMES! The last time it fried the inner part of the coil because, of course WATER ISNT SUPPOSED TO BE NEXT TO ELECTRICAL OUTLETS OR TOUCH THE STAINLESS STEEL COILS. Do you think i should run a Class Action or do an individual first to make way for the rest to get a chunck of the $38 million that was NOT spent in “Improving the Units”. Oh and BTW, the loan CLEARLY STATES THE $ is for IMPROVEMENTS NOT maintenance or the Downstairs Banquet Room which he put A LOT of $ into because he runs Weddings, Graduations etc. He also has a lot of filming on site that i know he wouldn’t habe gotten if he didnt do all the editions.Anyone care to give a level headed ex-Marine some advice?
Hi Richard,Inventing uses for cabinets and appliances other than their intended use can only be successfully accomplished by experts in kitchen design and construction. Usually some engineering ability is also needed. As an expert I know how hard succeeding in this can be and how many potentially dangerous problems are routinely overlooked by the less experienced.The fact you don’t list solutions for the most concerning issues that you would need to overcome yet ask for an opinion, tells me that you are out of your depth.
The biggest obstacles to overcome here, and there are many, would be that the depth of the oven is 23 1/2 ” and so the oven would have to be recessed into the wall through the back of the wall cabinet about a foot. What’s in that wall and in back of it? The oven, would need to be properly supported both inside and through the wall and inside the wall cabinet. The wall cabinet compromised by having it’s back cut out and handling excessive weight would also need to be supported in a new manner.
The heat generated in this unusual cavity passing through a wall would also need to be considered. The list goes on.This is paraphrased from our web site:“If you are like Leonardo da Vinci and know all the engineering rules that apply to a problem then you can break the rules. Unfortunately the people that usually want to break the rules are not da Vinci’s.”. Kimberly,I assume you mean a 30″ tall cabinet and not a wall cabinet. A 30″ wall oven should be installed in a 31 to 33″ wide tall cabinet so that the sides of the oven are not too close to the sides of the cabinet. Most less expensive US cabinet lines only make a 33″ wide oven cabinet so you aren’t even given the option to make a bad decision.Appliance manufacturers have been endangering their customers for decades until the building code changes to prevent their foolish recommendations.
The 2011 replacement air code requirement is just one of many examples of appliance companies knowingly placing sales above safety. Hi Lauren,Having a cooktop underneath a window presents many issues among them:Since downdraft hoods don’t work at all with gas burners and barely at all with electric ones, and lower the value of a home you should be getting a over the cooktop hood. And, placing a hood is front of the windows looks odd, from both the inside and outside, and defeats part of the reason you want the windows.You can not safely have curtains or blinds on any windows within 1 foot of the cooktop.The window should be a picture window and not open due to the danger of the flame issue.The window will be covered with the grease and oil normally being cleaned off a backsplash.On an insulated glass window the flames can not be too close otherwise the heat will break the seal on a window and it will fog up. The window company would need to ask all kinds of questions to know if there could be a problem. I would guess that the person you spoke to at the window company didn’t know enough to determine if there could be an issue. When people that have very thick stone walls this moves the window back far enough to prevent this problem or when the windows are higher off the countertop. The height you would need to go is the hard part to ascertain.
48″ above the countertop would be fine I am sure but 42″ might be cutting it close and 40 or less certainly would be a problem for people in cold climates. As the problem is exacerbated by a larger difference between the temperature inside and outside.This is why you need a good kitchen designer and why I have disdain for architects that don’t exclusively do kitchens giving kitchen advice. A little bit of knowledge is a dangerous thing. A good kitchen designer can help you make the best attractive and sensible design decisions. Many dangerous situations don’t make it into code or are not even enforced correctly when they are. For example, the lack of replacement air codes poisoned people for a decade before it made it into code in 2011.
Drawer Cabinets For Downdraft Cooktop Stainless Steel
Thinking that if you adhere to code while throwing common sense and science out the window you will be not create a dangerous situation is the mentality that creates many of the disasters that occur in kitchens. Our company has replaced several kitchens due to home fires that occurred when a fire on the stove jumped to a curtain nearby. Forrest Gump’s Mama said “Stupid is as stupid does”. When you are considering an obviously dangerous situation don’t scour code to find it authenticated. Just don’t do it!!!