Our kitchen extractor fan installation
If you’re reading this, chances are you’re already sick of investigating kitchen extractor fans OR you’re about to get sick of it!
You’d be so surprised if we told you the true number of emails we receive from fellow house renovators asking about our chimney breast extractor hood.
Why? Because we were in the same boat as you. It was nigh on impossible to find one that met all of our requirements and specific measurements. It had to be concealed, slimline, narrow enough in width to fit within the chimney breast, narrow enough in height to fit in the gap of the chimney (behind all the paster work) and fairly straight forward to fit – never mind it having to look good.
We miraculously found one though. The Bosch Serie 4 DFS067A50 90cm extractor (also available in 60cm here).
If you’re looking for a slim chimney extractor hood like we were, in this post we take a look at the journey we went on to find our chimney extractor that met all of our requirements.
This will save you DAYS of research! And before you read on, we’d love to support you further on your design decisions (they can get pretty overwhelming, right?) Take a look at Home Design Lab if you’re at a loss with colour, materials and want to get an incredible finish with your interior design – without the cost of hiring a designer.
How the chimney breast looked before
We bought a semi-detached house and did a knock-through kitchen/dining room, which allowed us to make use of the beautiful chimney breast and alcoves. We knew we wanted an inset cooker built in to the chimney breast to make use of the otherwise redundant space.
Our chimney breast kitchen extractor fan requirements
As mentioned earlier, when we were looking for a cooker hood/chimney breast extractors, we had a few requirements for this, you might have similar:
It had to look the part in our kitchen - we didn’t want something too showy (and let's face it no one want to make a feature out of an extractor hood unless it’s on an island or part of a very cool modern design)
It needed to be able to be vented outside (so that the smells and steam go outside not create condensation issues in the kitchen)
It needed to fit inside the hole of our chimney breast and be the right width for our cooker (if you’re interested, the cooker is the Rangemaster Kitchener 90).
Bosch Serie 4 chimney extractor
We got this cooker hood fitted into our chimney breast and we really like it, it's been going strong for a couple of years now.
The make in question is the Bosch Serie 4 and it’s available in a couple of different sizes the Bosch Serie 4 DFS067A50B 60cm extractor and the Bosch Serie 4 DFS067A50 90cm extractor.
What's so good about this chimney extractor?
Firstly it’s a concealed chimney breast extractor hood. You can barely see it. The controls sit in the corner hidden away for when you pull the extension section out to turn it on. It's super sleek.
It’s not overly invasive in terms of sound. It’s an open plan kitchen diner we have, and when we’re sitting having dinner if we need it to remain on, it’s not intrusive to conversation.
It operates by extending back and forth the front section, giving you double the extractor space.
It's automated, so when you're done cooking (or burning stuff!) it takes the smell and smoke/condensation away then turns the power down automatically when it’s finished - nice.
It has good lights - and easy to change the bulbs which we’ve only done once.
It has 4 ‘strength’ suction settings - so we tailor it to what we cook. Fry ups are on full suction! ;)
Lastly, it's easy to clean, the grills come out nice and easy, you chuck them in the dishwasher or in the sink and away you go. The front plate is just a simple wipe with a soft cloth or we use a stainless steel cleaner to give it a good shine.
How did we install this kitchen extractor fan?
If we said that we did this all by ourselves because it’s a super easy DIY job, our builder would probably hunt us down in his van and kill us with his power tools. Ha!
We’re afraid it’s a job for a competent trades person, not a DIYer. Our kitchen is from Howdens so take a look at our Howdens kitchens review and as Howdens prices don’t include fitting, we sourced our own guys for the job.
We won’t pretend there wasn’t a little bit of sweat from our builders getting this installed but then again, they seemed to say this fairly often.
Install - how did we vent externally?
In our old place we had one of those ridiculous extractors that just sucked into the machine with nowhere to take the condensation/smoke. We found that smells would linger and the resulting moisture would contribute to our damp issues. If you’re interested we have post all about how we solved our condensation problem.
We weren’t having any of that this time around so we decided we would vent to the outside world and let our neighbours smell our burnt food :-)
Initially being complete noobs at this sort of thing we thought that venting up the chimney was ‘a thing’ but it turned out that this wouldn’t be enough to get the smells and moisture out of the house. We also found out that our chimney was completely blocked with bricks and rubble (don’t ask!), so that wouldn’t have worked anyway.
The solution was to drill two large holes (about 20cm diameter each). One hole from the side of the chimney breast to create access to the space between the kitchen ceiling and underneath the upstairs bedroom floor, the other hole on the outside wall. We then run a piece of springy duct piping in between the extractor hood downstairs in the kitchen, under the bedroom floorboards, out through the external wall. Then fit a face plate outside to tidy it up. Simple.
Conclusion
As you can see in our after photo, from an aesthetics point of view, the Bosch chimney extractor is extremely low impact. We’ve achieved what we wanted with all of our requirements and now have a chimney extractor that performs really well, even when we have most of our hob rings burning.
If you’re looking for a chimney extractor we would definitely recommend either of these.
All opinions are our own - this post is not a collaboration and did not involve a supplier arrangement.
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