Low tech kitchen ventilation in a tiny house

First time poster hoping for advice from the kitchen design wizards out there! I'm looking for low tech, unpowered ideas to vent or disperse moisture from cooking. I have a kitchen window I can open. I don't love extraction fans or range hoods.
I'd hoped to have a window above my gas hob but a combination of flamability issues (proximity of window frame to flame), oil spatters being hard to clean up & probability of gas getting blown out by drafts mean that's no longer my plan. What else can I do? Thanks in advance

I have no experience with this but reading your post made me thing that if you had a hood to collect and concentrate the smoke and moisture and you ran a pipe from one side of the house the the other and it was oriented to face the typical prevailing winds then you could have a sliding cover to open and close the  pipe and it might passively pull the smoke out.

Or possibly have a low side and a high side.

That is a really cool idea and I hope you figure something out and share it here. Maybe there is already similar technology and someone in the permie community with fill us both in!

Ooo, I like that idea! I'll think on that. Thank you 🙂

I'd say a low vent and a high vent, open them both, the air will move out the higher one, taking moisture with it.  In winter, it will also take your heat with it though...

How to do any kind of vent depends on your climate, what your house is made of, and what skills/resources you have to do it with.

Welcome to permies! A good first question!! :D

I'll have a loft window open a wee bit all the time & I'm hoping that if I also open the kitchen window while I cook that that will create enough air flow to keep the house ventilated. My tiny woodburner will hopefully be more than enough to warm the house, even with a temporary air exchange during cooking. Thanks for your thoughts, much appreciated 🙂

Opening a second window was my first thought! Haha simple solutions are often best, in my opinion.

My third thought was the same as pearls and she is known as a master tinkerer around here so I'd lean towards a high and low intake and vent with a way to close it off when not in use.

Good luck designing a tiny home sounds like a whole lot of fun!

If was going to try a passive system, I'd be installing sensors so I'd know air quality wasn't being impacted. I like the idea of a low opening and a stove hood with a pipe that goes up for the "high" opening, because that would hopefully catch Carbon monoxide close to the source.

I do agree that stove fans are notoriously noisy and the one in our old motor home was too obnoxious for words, and my current kitchen one is almost as bad. If I had a choice, the "fan" part would be at the top of the pipe, rather than right by my stove, but that makes it harder to spot if there's a problem with the fan, and thus it can increase the fire risk.

This would be an interesting subject to research to see if anyone out there is doing a better job!

ETA - one of the Willow Feeders (permies version outhouse) at the lab uses a pipe going through some thermal mass with glass on the front to add heat energy to the pipe even when the sun isn't shining. The idea is to have positive pressure in a way that poop smells go out the stack and not into the bathroom area. I'm not the best person to chase down the reference, but I expect some of the people who know Wheaton Labs well, could elaborate.

I would do what the old timers did and that was put a cupola on the roof. It acts like a ventilation system since it pulls the moisture and cooking smells up and out of the house. Just add a controllable louver so that you can control the ventilation process better, especially in the winter if it gets cold there.

It is too bad you did not want it powered though. If you did that you could snap it on while you were cooking and vent the moisture/smells out on an as needed basis, or connect it to a thermostat so that the louvers open and close automatically. That is especially important in a fire situation because if you have a kitchen fire, with ventilation you end up with a blow-torch effect. But being powered, if the smoke detectors go off, it also shuts down the louvers so the fire is not drafting nearly as much.

We recently upgraded our louvers and exhaust fan system at work and the difference was staggering. We are within two degrees of set temperature now, and have fire suppression in case of a fire.

My suggestion would be to use an RV Kitchen Vent.

Different websites use different terms such as RV stove vent:

Once the damper is unsecured, the exhaust vent automatically opens when the range hood fan is activated, allowing cooking odors and smoke to be exhausted. The damper closes automatically to prevent insects, rain, and dust from getting inside the RV when the range hood is not in use.

https://www.campingworld.com/rv-range-exhaust-vent-white-53700.html


https://www.amazon.com/rv-stove-vent/s?k=rv+stove+vent

Open windows and doors: Opening windows and doors can help increase air flow and ventilation in the kitchen. Consider installing screen doors or windows to prevent insects from entering while still allowing for air flow.

Use a fan: A small, portable fan can help circulate air in the kitchen and improve ventilation. Place the fan near a window or door to draw in fresh air and circulate it throughout the space.

Install a range hood: If your tiny house has a stove, consider installing a range hood to vent smoke, steam, and cooking odors outside. A range hood can be installed directly above the stove or attached to a nearby wall or ceiling.  https://nettecky.com/

A couple of crazy ideas.

1. Use an old tower PC that has a removable side panel and remove all except the power supply and fan(s). Attach to the wall above the stove with the fans blowing outside. PC fans are pretty quiet. If you are offgrid could use a small solar panel to power a PC cooling fan.

2. Build a solar air heater which is like a 4x8ftx 4 inches deep box with dark window screen material to absorb solar heat. Mount it on a south facing wall with two vents at top and bottom going into the house. Hot air will naturally convect into your house while pulling cool air from the other vent or you can use a fan to force air through it. Use it to heat your home in winter. To use as an extractor fan you switch the air input to take air from a pipe that comes from a hood above your stove and switch the output to exhaust the hot air outside.

Dave Smythe wrote:
1. Use an old tower PC that has a removable side panel and remove all except the power supply and fan(s). Attach to the wall above the stove with the fans blowing outside. PC fans are pretty quiet. If you are offgrid could use a small solar panel to power a PC cooling fan.

This is exactly what i was thinking. Or else a USB powered fan. I have a few small ones in my office that are almost silent, if noise is your issue. They're small, but they produce enough airflow to pull stuff out the window.

Those little fans are really neat and have a lot of uses.

We use one during the winter to move air into unheated rooms.

Steve Zoma wrote:

It is too bad you did not want it powered though. If you did that you could snap it on while you were cooking and vent the moisture/smells out on an as needed basis, or connect it to a thermostat so that the louvers open and close automatically. That is especially important in a fire situation because if you have a kitchen fire, with ventilation you end up with a blow-torch effect. But being powered, if the smoke detectors go off, it also shuts down the louvers so the fire is not drafting nearly as much.

this is an interesting idea. in a typical commercial system you have either an addressable head or a hard wired zone that sets off a relay module closing or opening a dry contact to initiate the change in state for the damper.

In a typical home system you typically see either independent local sounder bases or a security system set up with a single smoke zone.

if i was to design for my own home i would install a  rate of rise  heat detector with similar dc power intake as the system in place for solar so that it doesnt require its own power supply and tie it into the contact leads on a pam relay to break  one leg of the power to the  damper when the contact shorts.

a more straight forward approach might be to have a fan and damper tied in parallel to have both come on when wanted and the power killed when not in use. this would make your power switch similar to a pull station only killing the fan and damper when triggered instead of having an angry smoke head preventing your damper and fan from working when there is a lot of smoke but no fire!

I know you don’t want a fan or such, but there have been several mentions of them.  I want to say beware, many cheap kitchen goods, vents etc do not exhaust the fumes outside!  (Crazy! right)

Also, I am pretty sure carbon monoxide is slightly lighter than air, so if it collects, it’s on the floor or in the basement.

I’m watching for the astonishingly simple solution here.  Been experimenting for years

I think the simplest thing would be well-placed windows, high and low, as has been mentioned. I think the most effective would involve fans.

We didn't even bother in our house. I assumed it would never work to my satisfaction and set up the cooking station outside. I'm very sensitive to smells and hate having cooking smells in my clothing. Whenever I'm at someone's (conventionally sized and ventilated) house and they're cooking, I can always smell it in my clothes afterwards. I can't see how it would be anything but worse in our tiny house, even with super ventilation.

Hi Amanda, welcome to the forums! Your question addresses moisture as the concern, but the biggest worry, especially in a small space, is the carbon monoxide and other fumes from the gas stove. Gas burns very clean, but there are still undesirable elements in the fumes. If a hood (ideal) isn’t practical, what about a fan built into the wall above the stove, located just below the ceiling? This could be as simple as a computer fan as others have mentioned. You could make a hinged, insulated flap to cover it when not in use if you live where it gets cold. The outside can be screened to keep tiny wildlife out, and you could even rig up a second insulated flap for outside, controlled from inside. A fan requires electricity of course, but draws negligible amps and could be solar powered. The high/low window or vent idea will work ‘mostly’ but a windy day could negate that. A fan outlet can be set up with baffles to still work in the wind.

Coming to also say a small USB fan. You didn't mention your climate but I find that a small fan by an open window is a low electricity wonder. Pointing out in your case. But it works great pointing in when night time outside temps are cooler than inside the house.

In some countries they have outside kitchens. Really cooking in a tiny house is smelly, at least cook outside in summer!

I cook a lot inside, all meals each day unless outside. I am running on 12 volt solar, but the easiest low tech was just cut a hole for the hood vent in the wall.  Kitchen window open. No pipes.  Get that moisture rich vapor out as soon as possible. Pipes will collect condensation and grease especially in cold weather.  In my tiny home air quality is constant maintenance. Ceiling vents open (one with 12 volt fan) during the day and closed up at night. Two years later, 11ºF temps, a small amount of condensation on windows and towels if they drip.  BTW, crock pot outside runs on 80 watts and as people have said, "cook outside", that's a good solution too if practical.