What fan would you buy?
 

I am looking into buying a new vent system. What would you get and why?

let me add that I have a hood vent, can I just replace the fan? What fan would you replace it with?

If you have a hood vent, especially if it's a kitchen range hood, you're almost guaranteed to need to replace the fan. Dale M is the only person I've run across who's found a kitchen range hood link that might work as-is for our needs. Since you already have something, the best choices for our needs seem to be squirrel cage fans or the higher quality in-line vent fans manufactured by Fantech, Vortex or CanFan.

When picking a replacement fan, what you need to look for in either type is the cfm you need for your size hood and how high you've mounted it above your work surface, after having accounted for the static pressure losses of your vent ducting. There's no one-size-fits-all because we each tend to customize our hoods to our working preferences, and therefore need to match the fan accordingly. As you decide which fan to pick, be sure you select one where you get the manufacturer's data on how the fan performs not only in free air, but also looking into various levels of static pressure.

One of the best resources I've found for calculating the fan you need, and how much static pressure you may have to account for, is

http://mikeaurelius.wordpress.com/ventilation-primer/

Linda

Thanks, are you saying I can replace my hood fan with a squirrel cage or an inline vent fan? I will check out mikes link also.

Simple answer, yes. It will take a little imagination to do the adaptation, depending on what you pick, but it's not too hard. You'll find lots of ideas if you search through either here in Safety or in the Studio part of the forum.

Linda

great and thanks, I will check out both of these forums well.