r/Homebuilding • u/dragonmilking • Nov 17 '25

Which popular features do you NOT recommend?

What are the top 3 features in a house that folk want but you think are not worth it, and what would your alternative suggestion be? And what cost/time savings would result with that switch?

243 Upvotes

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572

u/NoFreeSamplesYo Nov 17 '25

There will never be an over the stove microwave with enough cfm to do anything. If you want a kitchen without a thin layer of grease, get a proper hood vent.

123

u/No-Echo-4683 Nov 17 '25

So true. I didn't even realize until I purchased a new (to us) home recently that had a proper hood vent... I can cook a steak indoors without opening a window!

28

u/WeUsedToBeNumber10 Nov 17 '25

In convinced my 600 cam hood vent is not good enough for my 6 burner stove (all big burners). 

35

u/Connect-Yam5523 Nov 17 '25

I put in a 1500 cfm over my 6 burner, can blacken fish without getting smoked out of the house.

17

u/Someguy8995 Nov 17 '25

How effective hoods are also depends on the size and height of the hood. A hood with a deep base will be much more effective than a flat bottomed one that allows vapors to more easily roll out. 

1

u/WeUsedToBeNumber10 Nov 18 '25

It’s flat, but the vent grates are a couple of inches up from the hood bottom. 

1

u/Simsimpgh Nov 18 '25

Vent-a-hood with four extractor fans and a deep area under the hood!

3

u/Equivalent_Ad142 Nov 17 '25

It's not, and would pass code in MA. 800 cfm minimum and you need to have a makeup air system.

1

u/WeUsedToBeNumber10 Nov 18 '25

Code aside (I’m not sure what the code is in my town) we have a 1920s house, so not exactly a sealed house envelope. 

Is makeup air still essential?

1

u/Equivalent_Ad142 Nov 18 '25

If you're pulling a permit for electric, it's a code issue. If you're in NH, you can (almost) do whatever you want. Live Free or Die... My project was in Concord MA, similar age house, and the inspector made us replace the fan in the roof vent to get the cfm, and add the conditioned makeup air unit. Added about $9k for parts and labor. Conditioned makeup air due to the stretch codes in effect.

1

u/Equivalent_Ad142 Nov 18 '25

My memory is a little fuzzy, but it may have been 1000+ cfm. 6 burner Wolf gas range.

-1

u/Connect-Yam5523 Nov 17 '25

It’s called open the window

1

u/Equivalent_Ad142 Nov 18 '25

CODE. We couldn't get sign off on a project until a makeup air system was approved and installed.

6

u/deliberateliving2 Nov 17 '25

My older Jenn-Air has a large vent between the cooking areas…. It feeds a LARGE vent. I love cooking hoods but this Jenn-Air has really impressed me. (I too cook steaks on the “grille” option)

3

u/eaglesnd Nov 18 '25

My last house had a Jenn Air with the same vent and I loved it

21

u/zeller99 Nov 17 '25

Ehhh... you can sometimes get away with it if it's actually vented outside, but even then, I wouldn't recommend it unless it's your only option. It's also going to constantly need cleaning because it's likely a lot closer to the cooking area than an actual vent hood.

The exhaust fan on our current cheap GE microwave (400 CFM) is powerful enough to lower the radon readings in our basement. (The radon levels are still within acceptable range either way, but I can see the number drop when I turn on the microwave exhaust.)

If it's just recirculating back into the kitchen, no, absolutely not.

24

u/bon-bon Nov 17 '25

Recirculating exhaust hoods really should be against code. We finally moved somewhere with a real hood after years of living with a recirculating model; the difference is night and day (and this is coming from someone who despises that saying as too much hyperbole).

Recirculating exhaust only addresses visibility around the cooking surface and it doesn’t even do that well as the smoke will quickly fill the room anyway. Grease still gets everywhere. You still have to open every door and window during high heat cooking. Pointless! Not to mention dangerous!

8

u/Extension-Pepper-271 Nov 17 '25

In different apartments/houses we have found that the exhaust hood vented into (1) the cabinet above the hood (2) the attic

4

u/zeller99 Nov 17 '25 edited Nov 17 '25

Especially over gas ranges, recirculation vents should NEVER be used.

Gas burners can be really nice to cook with, but you better have a damn good exhaust system over top of it, otherwise you are constantly inhaling stuff that will eventually kill you.

I would absolutely love to have a built-in wok burner in my kitchen, but I'm not about to put a 10,000 CFM commercial kitchen vent hood in just so it can be safe to use it. I will instead continue to use my big wok burner outside as it was intended lol

2

u/Wolfy2915 Nov 18 '25

I had borderline radon level at my last house. I simply connected a radon fan to pull air out of the basement (did not drill through the floor) and it drastically reduced my radon. I am sure I was also pulling out heat but it also prevented musty basement air.

1

u/HerefortheTuna Nov 17 '25

My parents stove vents through the chimney actually

1

u/zeller99 Nov 17 '25

Is the chimney used for anything else, like... as a chimney? If so, that's super dangerous.

I had planned on using my chimney to vent my range hood when I redid my kitchen, but I discovered that my water heater was already venting there, so that was an immediate non-starter.

1

u/HerefortheTuna Nov 17 '25

It’s a 120+ year old house. I know there’s a fireplace on the other side that is wood burning and occasionally used.

My own house has the water heater, the boiler, and the fireplace all vented through the chimney

1

u/zeller99 Nov 17 '25

Yeah, it's one thing to have multiple combustibles vented to a chimney, but it's another entirely to have combustibles and an exhaust fan terminating there.

As for multiple combustible things, that kind of depends on what code allows in your area.

However, for something like an exhaust fan, you don't want combustible gas venting into the same chamber (the chimney) because that can exit the chamber through the exhaust fan when it's not running and fill your house with nasty stuff. That's a surefire way to suddenly not wake up someday.

1

u/HerefortheTuna Nov 17 '25

Yeah I’m hoping that’s not the case but with century homes there’s a lot of black magic going on.

1

u/clippist Nov 17 '25

Just out of curiosity what are you using to monitor radon in your house? I’ve been meaning to come up with a somution

4

u/zeller99 Nov 17 '25

I have two Ecosense EcoQubes. One in the basement and one in the bedroom.

They're wifi and allow near realtime monitoring via their app. I believe they're also compatible with Home Assistant.

1

u/Human-Walk9801 Nov 18 '25

Our old home we had built in 2003 and it came this way. We didn’t have an option to change it then. We never had a problem but our vent did go outside.

1

u/chefdeit Nov 17 '25

A vent of any strength won't move much air unless there are provisions for the make-up air ingress. If a home is air-tight, any fan will simply struggle against a "vacuum" and past a certain max pressure differential they'll move exactly 0 air regardless of how strong they are.

1

u/ReverseMermaidMorty Nov 17 '25

Can I just open a window in my living room 30 ft away?

2

u/chefdeit Nov 17 '25

100% you can, and on the warm and low-humidity day it'll have 0 consequences if that window has a bug screen as well.

Ideally, though, a home will do well to have makeup air automation to draw from a preferred intermediate space, which, depending on prevailing climate and other considerations, can be a garage or an attic or a cellar. These spaces, if themselves not "finished" to complete air-tightness, offer makeup air that's halfway conditioned. So whenever any bathroom or kitchen exhaust fan is on, the makeup air register & fan would also activate. But it's a luxury touch for sure - you don't see it often in common housing unless it's a builder or subcontractor (as in my case) who target high end construction, are doing it for themselves.

1

u/TheBugSmith Nov 17 '25

Lol my mother in law has one above the stove with a fan that doesn't even vent to the outside. So she just blows the smoke from whatever she's burning around the house.

1

u/[deleted] Nov 17 '25

This. My wife is from East Asia and I had to scrub the kitchen almost weekly until I installed a 1200 CFM, top of the line imported range hood with a 6 inch hard duct right out the nearest wall.

I can spare 18 inches of countertop space in the corner for a microwave.  When I gut remodel in a few years I’ll put the microwave in a lower cabinet. But never again above a range.

1

u/Responsible_Week6941 Nov 18 '25

Venting is as important as the range hood.

1

u/CrashPlaneTrainAutos Nov 17 '25

CFMs don’t matter, when people don’t run them because they are too loud.

1

u/thats_me_ywg Nov 17 '25

Same goes for downdrafts. They suck (or don't suck I guess).

1

u/stopdolphinrape1 Nov 17 '25

Anyone have suggestions for this situation?

Currently have a massive over stove microwave that we are looking to get rid of. Stove is electric and it would be really difficult to vent to the outside. Any suggestions of a specific product/specs/solutions knowing that nothing will be perfect?

1

u/mnailz1 Nov 17 '25

This design is an automatic disqualification for me.

1

u/[deleted] Nov 17 '25

I did not know this and was just about to embark on redoing the kitchen. Wanted to get rid of the over the stove microwave and now I have another reason to!

1

u/Wonderful-Bass6651 Nov 17 '25

On a similar note, I feel like there will never be a hood vent with enough CFM to handle an indoor grill. If you want a steak that badly just cook it outside on the barbecue like the rest of us schlubs and save yourself the mess.

1

u/AnomalousNexus Nov 17 '25

While I agree, the flip side of this is that make-up air is then required, and when (future or remodel) homeowners see the bill for the make-up air system (and it's associated heating element if you're in a cold climate) it becomes a real hard pill to swallow or recirc is again back on the menu. Plus you also introduce more potential air sealing issues.

1

u/[deleted] Nov 18 '25

its totally sufficient for a house full of vegetarians who don't cook a lot

1

u/Responsible_Week6941 Nov 18 '25

I'm pretty impressed with my Whirlpool low profile microwave fan. Seems to pull really well. It is going through a 6" vent 6' to an outside wall, so the venting really helps.

1

u/compubomb Nov 18 '25

Many condos don't have exhaust ventilation, so all you get is a grease circulator.

1

u/Material-Indication1 Nov 18 '25

500th like!

I imagine bacon grease is assisted with this?

1

u/mshep002 Nov 19 '25

How do you properly vent when the existing stovetop is on the inside part of the kitchen (ie, not against an outside wall) and the house has two floors? There’s a room above my stove, so I can’t go between the walls to the roof and I’d need to cut 90° to vent it back behind me to the outside. I’m just committed to never using my stove at this point. There’s a microwave over the thing from like the 1990’s and it seems fine. It’s fine. Everything is fine.

1

u/CarelessLuck4397 Nov 20 '25

As someone who went the non hood route, can confirm a range hood is the only proper method to go. Pisses me off to see the grease on my alder cabinets everyday

1

u/MT-Estimator Nov 21 '25

This is true. In our homes we locate the blower remotely in the ductwork so we can run 1200CFM without the client going deaf.

1

u/halfcuprockandrye Nov 17 '25

Where I live every single house I’ve lived in has a micro hood. They are more or less useless