Make Up Air - When is it needed? 

When talking about Make Up Air, we need to eliminate recirculating range hoods that do not vent to outside. It is always best to have exhaust venting to the outdoors for range hoods. When putting in a range hood, you don’t need a huge exhaust rate for residential homes.

Experts agree that a standard residential home only needs 250-350 cfm of exhaust venting during the cooking process. Just like anything there are always acceptations based on designs of range hoods, where its placed in the home, & efficiency of the fan. When a range hood is turned on the exhaust fan pulls air from inside sending it to the outside to remove odors & moisture.

As the volume of air goes from inside to outside that same amount of air moves from outside to inside. When this happens the air moves through the homes thermal envelope. So why are larger range hood with exhaust fans being sold to customers for residential homes? In todays world range hoods can be purchased from the internet, big box stores & appliance shops.

These places often have employees that are not trained or understand what size is actually needed for a residential home. Louisiana Mechanical Code requires that any range that exhausts 400 cfm or more must have make up air. In some cases fresh air ventilation alone can provide enough makeup / fresh air to offset the range hood exhaust. For more information click on Make Up  - Fresh Air Fan & or Fresh Air Venting.   

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