Ducted vs. Ductless Range Hood: Which One to Buy?

Having understood the importance of a kitchen air cleaner, you might now be wondering about the real deal: How do I choose the best one? There are lots of types of kitchen air cleaners in the market, such as exhaust fans, RV fans, regular built in rangehoods, microwave hoods, and many more! But did you know that there are only two underlying principles behind them? The AirHood team has done a research that, regardless of the brand, all air cleaners are either venting hoods or recirculating hoods.

Venting Hood or Ducted Range Hood

A venting hood, also known as a ducted range hood, uses a pipe to connect the hood to an outside wall, channeling the air outside through a duct. This venting mechanism is sucking the air from your kitchen and channels it outside of the wall with the pipe that connects your kitchen to the street.

While a ducted range hood usually has a higher flow rate because it pulls out more air and is simpler as it doesn't require any filters, it does require access to the outside wall. This design can be inconvenient and challenging for certain types of residential buildings, such as old buildings with pre-installed range hoods. New apartment buildings with a very compact layout might not be the best for venting hoods as well, because there will be a minimum airflow and less open space. Even if they use one, studies said that they use flat exhaust ports with halved flow rate performance, which is not very efficient, just to not make the compact building areas smelly (Kang et al., 2017). Buildings located in lowland also have a relatively poor venting efficiency due to the lower position of the exhaust port, meaning that the movement of the air is against its natural upward flow (Kang et al., 2017).

Venting Hood or Ducted Range Hood

The table above shows that the ductless range hood has some more advantages over the ducted one in terms of mobility and energy consumption, in which the ductless consumes less energy than the ducted hood. Having more mobility means you can freely place your ductless range hood without worrying about the pipe. You can rest assured that your walls won’t get damaged since there's no need to cut a hole. Second, more energy-saving means that less power is consumed, and less electricity bills. This is mainly because the recirculating hood uses activated carbon or charcoal filter to trap grease, odors, and other contaminants from the air. Hence, no energy from the ductwork is needed to push the air through the long pipe.