Most kitchen planning focuses on appearance and function: the cabinetry, appliance selections, island, storage, and seating. Those decisions matter, but a kitchen also affects the air pressure and air quality throughout the house.
A range hood removes air from the home. That air must be replaced.
If replacement air is not intentionally planned, the house will pull it from wherever it can: a fireplace chimney, attic, crawlspace, attached garage, wall leakage, or other unintended paths. In a high-performance home, that negative pressure can work against the carefully designed air-control layer and other systems intended to protect indoor air quality.
That is why SawHorse considers kitchen ventilation part of the home’s mechanical and building-science design—not simply an appliance selection.
Illustration courtesy of Fantech.
An ERV is not kitchen makeup air
An energy-recovery ventilator, or ERV, is designed to provide balanced, continuous whole-house ventilation at its intended airflow. It is valuable for bringing in filtered outdoor air and exhausting stale air from the home.
But an ERV is not makeup air for a kitchen hood.
It does not automatically replace the large, intermittent volume of air removed when a hood turns on, nor does it “self-balance” the house in response to kitchen exhaust. A hood and its makeup-air strategy must be designed, interlocked, and commissioned for the hood’s actual exhaust airflow.
The ERV remains an important part of the home’s overall ventilation strategy. It should not simply be assumed to solve a kitchen exhaust pressure problem.
Cooking is a source-control problem
Cooking creates more than odors. Frying, searing, boiling, baking, and everyday cooking can release fine particles, moisture, grease, and other pollutants into the home.
The best place to control those contaminants is at the source: directly above the cooktop, before they spread through the kitchen and the rest of the house.
An ERV, HVAC filter, or portable air cleaner can support overall air quality, but none replaces a properly designed exterior-vented range hood.
A recirculating hood is also not equivalent to a ducted hood that exhausts outdoors. It may filter some grease and odors, but it does not remove the cooking moisture, particles, or combustion byproducts from the house.
The EPA recommends using an exterior-vented range hood whenever cooking, using back burners when practical, and leaving the hood on for 10–20 minutes after cooking. At SawHorse, we recommend turning the hood on before the pan heats and allowing it to continue running after the cooking source has stopped.
Hood capture begins with kitchen layout
The location of the cooktop affects how well the hood can capture the rising cooking plume.
A wall-backed cooktop is generally more forgiving because the wall helps direct the plume toward the hood. An island cooktop can be beautiful, but it is harder to capture effectively because air can move around the cooking surface from all sides. Island hoods require especially careful design of hood size, mounting height, airflow, and surrounding room conditions.
Downdraft systems are generally a poor substitute for an overhead hood. Cooking air rises naturally; asking it to turn downward before it spreads into the room is a difficult capture problem.
At Hobbit House, the original kitchen design placed the cooktop on an island. Once we discussed the limits of island-hood capture, the kitchen was redesigned with the cooktop at a wall. That gave the project a more effective ventilation strategy before cabinetry, duct routing, and mechanical systems were fixed in the field.
Why SawHorse prefers induction
We strongly recommend induction rather than gas for new high-performance homes and major renovations.
Induction heats quickly, offers responsive control, and eliminates combustion at the cooktop. That means no gas-combustion byproducts are added directly to the kitchen.
Induction still requires a hood. Food itself creates moisture, grease, fine particles, and odors during cooking. Good source capture remains essential regardless of appliance fuel.
A kitchen hood changes the pressure in the whole house
Every cubic foot of air exhausted by a hood must be replaced by a cubic foot of air entering the home.
In looser homes, that replacement air may come through the easiest available paths. In SawHorse’s field experience, chimneys are often among the first paths. The house may then pull air from attics, crawlspaces, garages, wall cavities, and other leakage points.
In tighter homes, the pressure difference can be more pronounced because the house has fewer random leakage paths. A powerful hood can put stress on the designed air-control layer and pull air through unintended weak points unless replacement air is intentionally provided.
This can also be a combustion-safety issue. Depressurization can cause fireplaces, wood stoves, and atmospheric-combustion appliances to backdraft. An atmospherically vented water heater is particularly concerning because it can spill combustion gases—including carbon monoxide—into the home instead of reliably exhausting them outdoors.
For that reason, SawHorse prefers electric or hybrid heat-pump water heaters instead of atmospheric-combustion water heaters. They eliminate this particular combustion and backdraft risk.
Working carbon-monoxide alarms are also essential and required by code in homes with qualifying fuel-fired appliances, fireplaces, or attached garages.
Makeup air: code minimum versus real performance
Georgia’s residential code is currently based on the 2024 IRC with Georgia amendments. The prescriptive makeup-air provision is tied to particular conditions, including certain exhaust capacities and certain non-direct-vent combustion appliances within the home’s air barrier.
That is a code minimum—not a complete pressure-management strategy.
A hood below the code’s particular trigger can still create an unacceptable pressure condition in a tight, high-performance house. SawHorse’s recommendation is to plan dedicated makeup air whenever the pressure analysis shows it is needed.
At Hobbit House, the 300-CFM Fantech hood liner is coordinated with a Fantech MU Air system. When the hood runs, it signals the makeup-air equipment to supply replacement air directly to the kitchen.
The replacement air is filtered and tempered with heat as needed. The hood removes cooking contaminants outdoors while the makeup-air system supplies air through a known, designed path.
Atlanta’s summer air also brings heat and moisture with it. That is why a designed makeup-air approach may need filtration and tempering; simply adding an opening in the wall is not a complete indoor-air-quality strategy.
What if the house has no makeup-air system?
Opening a nearby window while the hood operates is a practical temporary measure. It gives replacement air a known path and helps relieve negative pressure rather than allowing the house to pull air from a chimney, attic, crawlspace, garage, or other unknown location.
Close the window once cooking is complete. This is not a substitute for a designed makeup-air system, but it is better than allowing the house to find replacement air on its own.
Do not operate a powerful hood without adequate replacement air while a fireplace, wood stove, or other solid-fuel appliance is operating.
Commissioning finds problems that drawings cannot
On one high-performance project, a kitchen hood and makeup-air system had been installed, but commissioning showed that the hood was not exhausting at its designed airflow.
Testing with a manometer found the home under approximately –40 Pascals of pressure while the system operated—far beyond the project’s Passive House pressure target. The negative pressure also compromised the seal of the radon system, requiring correction and activation of the radon system.
The problem was not a single failed component. An exterior hood cap restricted airflow by approximately 65%, and the exhaust fan was oversized. The cap and fan were corrected, but final airflow and pressure testing will be repeated once the home’s lightning-damaged ERV has been repaired.
The lesson is simple: a kitchen hood is not complete because it turns on. It is complete when commissioning verifies actual airflow, the control sequence, and house pressure with the relevant equipment operating.
Details that protect hood performance
A good hood design can be undermined by poor duct design or installation. We look for:
- A hood that exhausts outdoors, not into an attic, crawlspace, or interior space.
- Smooth, rigid ductwork sized for the actual fan and design airflow.
- The shortest and straightest practical duct route.
- As few elbows and restrictions as possible.
- A low-restriction exterior termination.
- A fan sized for the actual duct system—not simply the largest available option.
- Controls that coordinate the hood and makeup-air system.
- A maintenance plan for grease filters, fans, dampers, and exterior terminations.
Smart controls help, but good habits still matter
The most common kitchen-ventilation problem is simple: the homeowner does not use the hood.
We recommend turning it on for every cooking event, not only when something burns or smells strong. A delayed shutoff timer can keep the hood running after cooking without relying on someone to remember.
Some systems can also respond automatically to PM2.5, heat, or moisture. These controls are useful backups when someone forgets to turn the hood on. They do not replace a well-designed hood, dedicated makeup air, and a homeowner who understands how the system works.
Follow the manufacturer’s maintenance instructions for the hood, grease filters, makeup-air equipment, exterior hood cap, and controls.
Kitchen ventilation checklist: before the plan is finalized
- Has hood capture been considered when choosing between a wall cooktop and an island?
- Is the hood sized and positioned for the cooktop and expected cooking style?
- Will the hood exhaust outdoors through a short, smooth, reasonably direct duct route?
- Has the exterior hood cap been selected for low restriction at the design airflow?
- Is the exhaust fan properly sized for the actual duct system?
- Is makeup air required by code, pressure analysis, or the performance goals of the house?
- Where will replacement air enter, and will it be filtered and tempered?
- Are the hood and makeup-air system interlocked?
- Has the kitchen layout, hood, duct route, makeup-air path, and appliance selection been reviewed together by the HVAC designer before cabinetry and framing are finalized?
- Does the home have fireplaces, chimneys, a wood stove, an attached garage, or atmospheric-combustion appliances that require special attention?
- Are carbon-monoxide alarms installed and maintained as required?
- Has the team avoided treating the ERV as kitchen makeup air?
- Will the completed system be commissioned for actual airflow, control sequence, and house pressure?
- Does the plan coordinate ventilation with kitchen circulation paths and long-term usability?
Bring SawHorse in early
If SawHorse is involved early, we can coordinate kitchen design, architecture, HVAC design, indoor-air-quality goals, appliance selection, duct routing, and makeup air before the details are fixed in the field.
If you are working with an outside kitchen designer, architect, or interior designer, we are glad to collaborate. The earlier the conversation begins, the more options the team has to create a kitchen that is beautiful, functional, quiet, and genuinely healthy.
A kitchen hood is not just a finishing selection. It is one of the home’s most important source-control systems—and it needs to work with the house, not against it.
Continue learning about high-performance homes
Kitchen ventilation is one part of a whole-house strategy. Explore SawHorse’s guides to airtightness and ACH50, ERVs and dehumidifiers, moisture control, and our science-based healthy-home approach.
Sources and further reading
- U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Strategies for Improving Indoor Air Quality While Cooking
- Georgia Department of Community Affairs, Construction Codes: Documents and Downloads
- ICC Digital Codes, 2024 International Residential Code with Georgia Amendments — Chapter 15: Exhaust Systems
- U.S. Department of Energy, Heat Pump Water Heaters
