Damp mouldy kitchen

[D4mpD4mp]

I need help! Our kitchen (1960s house) has two outside walls and no ventilation, aside from windows, or heating. As a result it is always cold and damp, with black mould on the ceiling and by the window frames/door. We wanted to have an extractor fan fitted but our electrician has advised us it would involve either taking the ceiling down or fitting trunking across the middle of the ceiling in order to go out of one wall as the other, more obvious and easier, walli s unusable because it would mean having to drill a hole through the roof (we have a 1960s style low roof that ends just at the top of the kitchen wall). Unfortunately we don't have the money to do this so does anyone have any advice on what to do next? Can we get a bathroom style extractor fan fitted via the light fitting or is that no good in a kitchen? Any other ideas very welcome because I feel like we've hit a brick wall and I can't bear having to spend my life spraying mould every time it appears.

I'm baffled. Why cant you have an extractor fan (not a noisy hood) that is ducted straight out of one wall?

I'm baffled by this too. Are you sure your electrician knows what they're on about?

Maybe I've missed something.

I'd try getting another electrician in for advice.

Thanks everyone, I'm frustratingly ignorant about this. The electrician was suggesting running it from the current extractor fan we have above the oven which would lead to all the issues mentioned because of the location of the oven and the appropriate walls. So could he instead install an extractor fan in a wall not attached to the oven? If so, how would it be powered? Sorry for asking stupid questions! (And I have contacted two other electricians for quotes now too )

Can you put some heating in - plinth heating perhaps. That would make a difference. And open the window when cooking.

To be honest, in the interim you could put in a wall-mounted plug-in electric radiator for heating*, and open a window as necessary for ventilation, till you get a proper plan together.

*electric heaters and walk mounts available from any B&Q type store

A dehumidifier would be a solution to the problem.

Extractor fan is best over hob,not oven,but anywhere is better than nothing. Competent electrician can run cabling.

Extractors work best with ducting run in a straight line.

We have an xpelair fan in our kitchen on an outside wall it is powered by an electric switch near it so you would just need an electric point putting in near where you want the extractor fan, it is like a bathroom one but a bit bigger and has a pull cord to switch it on

i think he is saying that a cooker extractor hood would be difficult to duct to the external wall.

But you can have an ordinary extractor fan fitted to any wall that is not made of glass. It needs to be more powerful than a cooker hood because it is not extracting the steam at source. A larger one is quieter than a small one racing at high speed.

so you'll probably need a 6-inch or 8-inch diameter hole (150mm or 200mm) in the wall

A 2-speed or variable-speed is handy so you can run it slow for general ventilaton, or high when you are frying onions, but it put the price up enormously.

look at noise rating in db. 25db is audible but tolerable. 20db is whisper-quiet.

Kitchen extractor fans are quite rare now so I am not familiar with them.

A cooker hood that extracts is much more suitable in a litchen. Please draw some pics of yours to spark ideas. If you want to vent through a roof, get a roofer to do it or it will leak.

Examples:
www.screwfix.com/c/heating-plumbing/extractor-fans/cat840510#category=cat7490004&brand=xpelair&extractionrate=229_m__hr|230_m__hr|241_m__hr|460_m__hr
I am not impressed by Manrose.

I'd get a wall fan, basically a slightly more businesslike version of a bathroom fan, and pay attention to airflow, ie. is there an inlet into the room such as a trickle or wall vent so you get a good cross flow.
Also consider whether it needs any damp proofing/insulation or whether a small convection heater could be fitted.

You could look at something like this www.envirovent.com/products/extractor-fans/eco-dmev/ which runs continuously on very low power to keep a gentle air change going, it also has a boost.

A regular extractor fan in the wall will be fine, yeah. It's not as fancy as a cooker hood but it does the job. I've never had a cooker hood, just a fan, and I've got no problems.

If the wall isn't possible, then a window-mounted fan.

And get a radiator in there!

We had a similar problem and installed a bathroom style extractor fan in the external wall of the kitchen in addition to the recirculating cooker hood. It worked well. We had the attached.

www.tlc-direct.co.uk/Products/ADAUE150.html

That one's good value, and quiet.

it is discontinued on this site (Amazon seem to have some but do check for guarantees) but here's mine:

www.tlc-direct.co.uk/Products/ADSV6.html

when it behaves it is quiet and works well, no more steamy or smelly kitchen. If you can find something similar it may solve your problem. You also need the ducting and the flaps that close off the outside hole.

someone on here said that the reason extractor hoods are so noisy is that they act as an echo chamber for the fan inside them. Sounds very form over function to me, maybe someone does make one that is quiet.