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I want to vent smoke, such as roasting coffee smoke and cooking grease out of my kitchen. I do not have a hood, nor is there room to install one due to cabinet and window placements just above the stove.

I have a window just above the stove, so placing a fan in the window is doable and seemingly effective. But in the winter having a fan suck all of the hot air out of the house is not ideal.

Is the loss of heat, over a 20 minute period of window fanning a few times a week a big deal?

Is there a way for the fan to suck out the smoke without losing too much hot air?

Should I invest in a through the wall vent, and would this be any better than the window fan?

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    For domestic use there are heat exchanger extractor fans (wall rather than window mount as far as I know). Assuming you heat your house for much of the year they might be worth a look.
    – Chris H
    Oct 24, 2016 at 16:25

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Not all "range fans" blow the air out of the house. We discovered after decades that ours does not. It has filters and the air just comes out of the sides and right back into the kitchen. You might think that can't handle your situation, but we roast coffee under it and it works fine.

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  • Did you change the filters regularly? I used to have a recirculating hood (mounted on an outside wall so no excuse for it) and if I didn't change both the grease and the odour (charcoal) filters regularly it wasn't much help. Of course this can't deal with steam, but a dehumidifier could help with that.
    – Chris H
    Mar 11, 2020 at 16:36
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    We really didn't - we thought it was just putting the dirty air outside. I believe we do now, and we only started the coffee roasting recently, so I'm not suggesting a non vented hood with decades old filters can handle coffee roasting.
    – Kate Gregory
    Mar 11, 2020 at 16:47

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