Range Hood Inserts

Insert widths and the surround

Look at the widths in this range: 28, 34, 40, 46, 52 and 58 inches. Put those beside the familiar hood widths of 30, 36, 42, 48, 54 and 60, and the pattern is exact: every insert is two inches under one of them.

Those two inches are the surround: an inch of material on each side of the unit. The ladder is built so that a hood constructed around a 34 inch insert finishes at 36, and one built around a 46 finishes at 48. The number on the insert is an input, and the number the room sees is the one after the surround is added. A thicker surround shifts that arithmetic, which is why the finished width is the figure to decide first. There is a smaller unit here too, at 20.5 inches, for the narrow openings the ladder does not reach.

The surround is built separately

With an insert, the visible hood is joinery, plaster, masonry or metalwork made to the design of the kitchen. It can be a plastered chimney breast, a wood canopy, a stone surround or a painted box, and it can match the cabinetry exactly because it is made from the same material.

That is the reason to choose this type: it is the only one where the hood is not a product you pick from a catalog but part of the room. It is also why it needs a maker, and why the insert is usually specified before the surround is designed instead of after.

What an insert contains

A liner with the working parts in it: a blower in most cases, filters, lighting and controls. Some are full liners that form the inside surface of the finished hood, so the stainless face is what is seen from underneath; others are narrower units intended to be more fully concealed. Some are built to work with a blower mounted elsewhere instead, which the range hoods page works through.

Which of those a design wants depends on how the underside of the finished hood is to be built. It is worth establishing before the surround is drawn, since it changes both the opening and what is visible from below.

The opening an insert needs

Every insert publishes the opening it needs, and the surround is built to that figure. So the two numbers work in opposite directions and both matter: the finished outside width is what you want the room to see, and the insert's published opening is what the maker builds to.

Getting the order right is most of the job: decide the finished width, choose the insert that leaves the right allowance inside it, issue its opening drawing, and build the surround to that.

Ducting inside the surround

An insert normally exhausts upward, and the duct runs inside the surround that has been built around it. That surround also has to allow for the duct, for access to the unit and for the electrical supply.

Because all of it is concealed, it is easier to build in than to add afterwards. The range hoods page explains ducting and airflow across all the types.

Kitchens that suit an insert

Kitchens where the hood is meant to disappear into the cabinetry, and kitchens where it is meant to be a built feature in plaster or stone. In both cases the hood is being made and not bought, and the insert is the equipment inside it.

If the hood itself is to be the visible object, the wall and island ranges are the types designed to be seen, and the under cabinet page covers hoods that fit into an existing run of cabinets.