Range Hood Installation near you

The NCC housing provisions set out minimum flow rates and a discharge requirement for exhaust in wet and cooking areas. An exhaust system installed in a kitchen, bathroom, sanitary compartment or laundry must have a minimum flow rate of 25 L/s for a bathroom or sanitary compartment and 40 L/s for a kitchen or laundry. Separately, exhaust from a kitchen, kitchen range hood, bathroom, sanitary compartment or laundry must discharge directly or via a shaft or duct to outdoor air, and the Code's explanatory material states plainly that a range hood installed in a kitchen must comply with that discharge requirement.

There is a companion rule that installers forget and homeowners feel. Except for rooms ventilated by other means under the Code, a room with an exhaust system must be provided with make-up air, and where that is done through openings to an adjacent room the free area is 14,000 mm2 — an area the Code notes can be achieved by a 20 mm undercut to a 700 mm wide door. Without make-up air, a strong hood in a sealed kitchen cannot move the air it is rated for, and it will pull replacement air from wherever it can find it.

The NCC takes effect through each state and territory's building legislation and applies to building work, so a new home or a kitchen renovation is squarely within it while a like-for-like hood swap may not be. Even then it is the sensible benchmark to install to, because a hood that does not discharge outside is not doing the job the Code expects of it.

Extraction performance lives and dies on the duct. Every bend, every reduction in diameter and every metre of flexible ducting costs airflow, so the shortest practical route at the full diameter the hood is designed for will outperform a bigger, louder unit on a strangled duct. Rigid duct beats flexible for the same run, and where flexible is unavoidable it should be pulled taut rather than left concertinaed across a ceiling.

The termination matters as much as the route. Discharging into a roof space, a wall cavity or an eave is not discharging to outdoor air, and in an Australian roof space it deposits warm grease-laden moisture exactly where condensation and mould do the most damage. A proper external cowl or grille with a backdraught flap keeps weather and vermin out, and in a bushfire-prone area the termination detailing is worth raising with the installer, since external openings are part of how a house is protected.

A powerful hood removes a large volume of air from the house, and that air has to be replaced. In a home with an open-flued gas heater, the replacement air can come down the flue, dragging combustion products back into the room with it. Energy Safe Victoria's guidance is direct about the risk: do not operate exhaust fans at the same time as your heater, because a rangehood, toilet or bathroom fan can create a negative pressure effect, drawing carbon monoxide into living areas. Dangerous gases can be drawn into living spaces via the gas appliance flue or chimney.

This is not an argument for a weak hood; it is an argument for make-up air and for having the gas appliances tested. ESV recommends gas heaters be serviced regularly and that the service includes a check for negative pressure by the gas plumber. If your home has an open-flued gas heater and you are fitting a new hood, say so when you book the installation and have the heater checked afterwards rather than assuming the two systems will not interact.

A typical installation runs in a fixed order: confirm the hood suits the cooktop width and type, set the mounting height, plan and cut the duct route, mount the hood, run and seal the duct to its external termination, make the electrical connection, and test that the unit actually draws at each speed. Over a gas cooktop, the height is not a matter of taste. Energy Safe Victoria's guidance gives a minimum of 650 mm from the supporting surface for the cooking vessels to the lowest part of the rangehood for new installations under AS/NZS 5601.1:2022, 750 mm to the lowest part of an exhaust fan, and 600 mm from the highest part of the highest burner or hob to the rangehood for existing installations, in each case unless the manufacturer's instructions require more.

The electrical side depends on how the hood connects. A unit that plugs into an existing socket inside the overhead cupboard is straightforward; a hardwired hood, a new circuit or a relocated outlet is electrical installation work for a licensed electrician. In Victoria, only Registered Electrical Contractors and Licensed Electrical Workers can complete and lodge a Certificate of Electrical Safety, and the customer must be given a copy — which is worth asking for at the end of a kitchen job rather than a year later when you are selling the house.

Recirculating hoods exist because some kitchens genuinely cannot be ducted: an apartment with no external wall available, a heritage building, a bench island with concrete below. They pass air through grease filters and a charcoal cartridge and return it to the room, which does remove some odour and grease but leaves the water vapour and combustion products in the house. The charcoal cartridges are consumables and have to be replaced on the manufacturer's schedule, or the unit becomes an expensive fan.

A ducted hood is the better answer wherever a duct can be run, because it is the only arrangement that satisfies the Code's requirement to discharge to outdoor air in new work, and because moisture removal is half the reason to have a hood at all. If you are renovating, settle the duct route before the joinery is drawn: it is the constraint that determines which hoods are actually available to you, and retrofitting a duct through finished cabinetry is the most expensive way to discover that.

Two sets of consumer guarantees apply to a hood installation, and they are worth separating. The appliance itself carries the product guarantees: where a problem is major, the ACCC says the business must give the consumer the choice of a refund or a replacement of the same type; where it is minor, the business must fix the problem or repair the product for free. The installation carries the services guarantees: service providers must carry out all services using an acceptable level of care and skill, services and any resulting products must be fit for any stated purpose, and services must be supplied within a reasonable time where no time frame was agreed.

In practice most disputes about hoods are installation disputes rather than product disputes — a duct that terminates in a roof space, a hood set too low over a gas cooktop, a unit that cannot draw because there is no make-up air. Keep the quote, the invoice, any electrical certificate and photographs of the duct run taken before the ceiling was closed up, and put the complaint in writing to the business that did the work.