A custom hood is cabinetry wrapped around a working extractor. The surround is ours; the insert and the air it moves are decided by what you cook on. Getting the second part right is what stops a beautiful hood being an ornament.
A four burner electric hob wants roughly 300 to 400 CFM. Gas wants 400 to 600 as a minimum, and a pro-style range is sized on its output, around one CFM for every hundred BTU, so a sixty thousand BTU range wants six hundred. Those numbers set the insert, and the insert sets the box we build around it.
The duct run matters as much as the fan. Undersized pipe throttles a good insert: up to 400 CFM wants four inch, 401 to 600 wants six, 601 to 900 wants seven and above that eight. An inch under the recommendation is noticeably worse, not marginally.
So the route is checked before the cabinetry is drawn. Where it has to cross a joist or turn twice, that is worth knowing at the survey rather than on install day. See custom cabinets, the custom hub and backsplash behind the hob.
Recent work
How it works
How a Hood Surround Is Built
Start with the hob
What you cook on sets the CFM, and the CFM sets the insert. Everything about the cabinetry follows from that, which is why we ask about the range before the door style.
Trace the duct route
Where the pipe runs, how many bends it takes and what diameter the route allows. Bends and undersized pipe both cost extraction, and both are cheaper to solve on paper.
Size the surround
The box is built around the chosen insert with access for servicing, and proportioned to the wall rather than to the appliance. A hood that is right for the insert can still be wrong for the room.
Build, fit, connect
Built with the rest of the cabinetry and fitted with the insert in place, then connected and tested. The finish is matched to the run so the hood reads as part of the kitchen.
Vented or not
Why Recirculating Is the Weaker Option
A vented hood pushes cooking air outside. A recirculating one filters it and returns it to the room, which removes some grease and odour and removes none of the heat, moisture or combustion gases. On gas that difference is not cosmetic, and it is the reason we ask about the route before anything else.
Filters also cost you throughput. Passing air through a carbon filter drops effective extraction by roughly ten to twenty percent, so a recirculating installation should be specified a size up rather than at the same number as a vented one.
Sometimes an outside wall genuinely is not reachable, and recirculating is the honest compromise. We will say which situation you are in rather than building a handsome surround around an insert that cannot do the job. Door style, finish and the worktop all follow once the air is settled.
Honest limits
Other custom work
The Rest of What We Build
A hood surround is planned with the run around it. These are the rest of that run.
CFM, duct sizing, vented against recirculating, and what we build.
Roughly 300 to 400 for a four burner electric hob and 400 to 600 minimum for gas. A pro-style range is sized on output, about one CFM per hundred BTU, so a 60,000 BTU range wants around 600.
Up to 400 CFM wants four inch, 401 to 600 wants six, 601 to 900 wants seven and beyond that eight. An inch under the recommendation is noticeably worse, not a rounding error.
It removes some grease and odour and none of the heat, moisture or combustion gases. On gas that matters. Where an outside wall is genuinely unreachable it is the honest compromise, sized up to allow for filter resistance.
Roughly ten to twenty percent of effective CFM, because the air has to pass through carbon. That is why a recirculating installation should be specified a size above the vented equivalent.
We can, or you can supply your own and we build the surround around it. Either way we want the model before the cabinetry is drawn, since the box is dimensioned to the insert.
Proportioned to the wall rather than the appliance. A hood correctly sized for the insert can still be wrong for the room, which is a drawing question rather than a technical one.
Yes, and it is designed for. Access to the insert is built in rather than sealed over, because filters need cleaning and motors eventually need replacing.
Tell us what you cook on and we work out the extraction, trace the route to the outside wall and only then draw the surround. Quoted with the rest of the cabinetry.
