Installing the Range Hood

I completed building and finishing the mantle part of the range hood, which is the "base" with the fan unit. I installed it just in time for my DW to cook dinner for Father's Day. The pictures show it in place with the venting and power hooked up.

The power unit is 250 CFM at full speed and 125 at half speed. It seems to pull the fumes out out fine.


The 7" flex-tube worked really well for connecting the unit up to the elbow. I would have liked to just bend the flex-tube to 90 degrees and connect it, but I could not get it to bend tight enough.

Once in place, I wrapped everything with metal foil tape. Don't use duct tape for ducts - it sounds silly, but it fails over time. Metal foil tape is by far superior (click here for more details).

I sealed every joint with tape. If you have ever removed the ducting for an old vent hood, you know there is a lot of grease and dirt. The assembly I took out had likely been in there for 30 years, and was nasty. Anywhere there was a seam, greasy oil had seaped in. I can't change the laws of physics, but I can try to combat them...

Next I need to build the removable beadboard panel that goes above the mantle.

Building a Range Hood

The pictures below are of the range hood I built this afternoon. It has the fan unit in back (click here for details) and a 24 inch fluorescent light in the front. The fan unit comes with a light, but it's fairly small and 40W incandecent.

The hood is going to be 24 inches about the cook-top, so the bottom material needed to be non-combustible. I used air duct sheetmetal to cover the wood. I also made an inset box for the light to sit in. The seams in the box are sealed with gray high-temp silicone caulk. This was the first time I worked with metal like this, and it came out OK. It took the better part of three hours to just do what's shown here...

Here is the top side of the hood unit.

Once the fan unit was fully in, I put the the bottom trim and top mantle pieces on. The center part in the picture already had stain on it, so it's darker.

The final thing to do is stain and apply the carving to the front.