I’ve just discovered that some of my friends only turn on their vent hood when cooking something stinky or it’s getting hot in the kitchen. Please take this poll.
Now, I’m not going to go into the politics or science of why there could be a ban on natural gas and propane stoves in residences. And I’ll do some research in the coming months to see if propane cooktops in RVs may be banned as well. But I am curious as to how many of you use the stove vent hood in your house or RV every time you’re cooking with gas…
“TUESDAY, Jan. 10, 2023 (HealthDay News) — Gas stoves could face new emissions standards or even be banned because of their link to indoor air pollutants and childhood asthma, according to the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC).”
This all has to do with the possibility of indoor air pollutants causing childhood asthma. Again, I’ll do a deep study on this later and let you know what I find out. But in the meantime I’ve noted that some of my friends with gas cooktops only turn on their vent hood fan when they’re cooking something smelly or it gets too hot in the kitchen.
What?
My son (the CIA trained pastry chef), and my wife (the self-trained home chef) ALWAYS turn on the fan in the vent hood every time there’s a lighted flame on the cooktop. But, my wife noted that her best friend never turns on her vent hood fan unless she’s cooking something smelly. And I have a few friends who just don’t bother with the fan when frying an egg on their gas cooktop in the RV.
Why the possible ban?
These combustion products are most likely bad for you (and your children or grandchildren) to breathe, so I think it’s important to turn on the vent hood fan in your RV or residential kitchen anytime you’re cooking with gas. But I also know that many of you want to conserve your heat while living in your RV during the winter months. Or my wife’s friend said that nobody ever told her when to use the vent hood.
Please take this poll
Please comment on how and when you use your stove’s vent hood fan below. We’ll get into the possibility of RV gas stoves and cooktops being affected by new emission standards in the near future. But for now, I just want to know when your turn on the ventilation fan over your gas stove or cooktop.
Let’s cook safely out there… Mike
I rarely cook in the camper. When I do, I use the vent. it keeps some of the grease out.
My sticks and bricks is all electric, so not so much use it there but in the RV with propane stove and oven, it goes on EVERYTIME it is in use.
Our RV does not have a vent fan for the gas top stove. We open the window next to the cook area to vent.
Our vent fan is located in the microwave installed above the stove. It doesn’t vent to the outside so I don’t use it.
I’ve always wondered why my gas furnace and water heater were vented and my stove was not. Because of this seemingly strange situation I always turn on my vent in my house.
In my RV, I also use the vent always, but for another reason. If I don’t have the fan on, the smoke detector goes off.
Our vent hood fan is so noisy it is not very pleasant to run. Lets face it, they don’t use the most efficient/quiet motor/fan blade assembly to be found. On top of that it also evacuates quite a bit of your conditioned (cool/heated depending on season) environment.
Mike, as others have said, our vent fan is noisy too. We have a gas stove at home as well, so we realize this is a much smaller space so we always turn it on when cooking.
Maybe burning the additives is causing toxic byproducts … Mercaptan is added to propane when loaded onto transport trucks. This odorant allows humans to smell propane.
House flies are common at loading facilities and around trailer valves/pumps. Spiders are attracted as well clogging burner jets.
Please share this with any other RV groups you belong to. I need data!
We always use the vent hood when using the gas stove. We actually use a campstove outside if the weather is decent. We have a campstove with 2 20 mBTU burners, so it perks the coffee way faster….
the vent hood in our rv is a joke. it is built into the microwave and if you press the button the vent fan runs. but there is absolutely no ducting to run the exhaust out of the rv. so if you turn the vent on all you are doing is just blowing it back onto the rv. what’s the point?
While I checked we always use the vent hood (actually the fan is in the over the stove microwave that vents to the outside) in reality since the microwave runs on 120 VAC we can only run it when we are hooked to shore power or have the genny hooked up and running (not often).
In the rv the vent is on when cooking. At home only when cooking Smokey or smelly things. I personally don’t think the vent fans are very effective at moving all the air.
I don’t see what the issue is. Growing up we had a gas stove that wasn’t vented. I’m 75 and my dad is 95. How harmful could it be?
I also use gas stove in my home as well gas logs in fire place. I live in Coastal NC so I am subjected to hurricanes. If they ban gas heating and cookng devices I assume “they” would want us to heat and cook with electricity. BUT what would we cook and heat with when a hurricane knocks out the power for days or even weeks. The reasonable answer is “use a generator”! But that requires use of gas or propane so we are back to square one.
The reason we use the vent fan is because we hate hearing the fire alarm screeching, and that almost unintelligible voice saying “Fire, fire”.
At home-always with the gas stove.
In RV, the hood just recirculates the air and does not expel it. But we do turn on the roof powered vent when using gas stove or when using the Ninja cooker which is smelly.
We have a gas stove at home, and turn the hood fans on to vent odors or heat. Although not as loud as the previous single fan, the fans can get tiresome to listen to; with a 6-burner stove, we have 2 sets of 2 fans. (We always run both in a set, because that is actually more quiet than just one, apparently due to direction of the squirrel cages.)
In our small travel trailer, the vent flap is clipped open when we’re in camp, for a little bit more air circulation. (Unless it’s very windy and cold.) That means we always have air over the burners, even if the fan isn’t on.
The vent hood in both my home and RV are the recirculating type. (Should be added to poll)
NO MONEY AND ETHONOL IN THE PUMP GASOLINE ATTRACTS H²O & WATER DON’T BURN IT RUSTS, CORRODES & GUMS UP THE FUEL SYSTEM = $💸 & IF YOU DONT VENT / OPEN WINDOWS ? YOU’RE JUST FEELING THE EXHAUST SYSTEM WITH A FLAMMABLE DEPOSIT THAT WILL DESTROY YOUR TRAILER: MY FRIEND HAS A RESTAURANT AND HE HELPED ME INSTALL A FIRE SUPPRESSION SYSTEM IN BOTH THE STOVE HEATER AND EVEN THE SHOWER IT’S ALL THE SAME BESIDES THAT THE GAS STOVE OVEN IS ONLY BIG ENOUGH TO COOK A PIGEON? BUT WAS JOEY ROBINETTE AND IT’S ALL NEW ALL ELECTRIC FUTURE WORLD HOW WE GOING TO PULL THEM ( TRAILER RV DRAGERS) 0R AFFORD $7 I GASOLINE FULL OF ETHANOL GETTING TWO MILES PER GALLON IT WILL BE FOR THE RICH AND FAMOUS UNLESS WE CAN GET SOME PURE GASOLINE AND MAYBE LABEL THE TRAILERS/ RV’S WITH THE QUALITY WORDS” MADE IN THE USA” NOT MERELY PARTIALLY ASSEMBLED ON SOMEONE WHO CAN’T READ APPLIES TO INSPECTION STICKERS ON A PIECE WORK BASIS TO EVERYTHING THAT GOES BY! DON’T BELIEVE ME CHECK YOUR INSURANCE NEXT YEAR!
ERIC.., YOU DON’T HAVE TO YELL!
Always use the vent! 🪦
YOU WILL SAVE LIVES!
Riiiight!
Don’t use ours because it just recirculates. We sometimes use the roof vent.
“This all has to do with the possibility of indoor air pollutants causing childhood asthma. ” Sorry but no. It all has to do with the banning of petroleum products.
I always turn the fan on when cooking with gas. My wife rarely does, and she does most of the cooking. If it is hot, she sometimes uses the Fantastic in the RV which is above the stove.
Mike, my smaller RV (18′) does in not have a vent fan and I always worried about cooking with it.
Like some who have said that their fan isn’t connected to the outside, it just circulates in their motor homes. So does that mean if we keep the pilot light on we have to keep the vent fan on?? Usually we use our fantastic fan when the stove is in use, on exhaust & its very quiet! If it counts we all ways our exhaust fan at home, we have a vintage 1953 Gaffers & Sattler stove.
Snoopy
Our vent fan in our RV is not vented to the outside.
To politically correct for me.
We don’t always use exhaust fan when cooking in our rv but always have window open and usually our maxifan in living area on
I have owned my current RV for 5 years and have never used the stove top. I use an electric skillet, an instapot, and the microwave. I use propane only for heat on very cold days in Florida (1 – 2 a year). No worries about propane…
Few RV’s have a cook top fan that vents to the outside.. most just return the air inside the coach
Until proved otherwise, I choose to believe those cheap range hoods are much better at making noise than removing fumes, ducted or not.
It’s not among the top 1000 things I worry about. I’ve yet to even see proof of the asthma-propane linkage.
Only when the smoke alarm goes off!
🙂 A little late then, maybe? 🙂
We always use the vent for the simple reason to get rid of cooking fumes.
Turn on the roof vent super fan and open a window a little on other end of RV…works well.
We have propane at home and don’t even have a hood… In the rig I tend to use it most of the time to disperse heat/vapors.
I used to use the vent when cooking with gas but I converted all my cooktops (home & RV) to induction. Much better than gas. It’s faster, more energy efficient, and easier to clean up after.
I cant tolerate how gov’t intrudes on people’s lives. Next, I’ll need to stock up on my 6′ fluorescent tubes for the garage.. Sorry, but today;’s parents have more negative impact on young children’s lives than a thousand gas stoves.
I don’t like gas and only use induction cooktops, it all has to do with what you breathe!
RV’ers should understand the health risks of open flames in a confined area, they can even be deadly. That said, most new rigs are moving to induction cooktops anyway so no real concerns with the new regulations. Do I always remember to turn the fan on, no but trying to make it a habit
In the RV to turn on the vent fan you have to go outside to manually open flap, that doesn’t happen, too much trouble. I had an RV that you could open the flap from the inside, then anytime I would burn something I would use it.
This is ALMOST comical. Health issues are ALWAYS something else but, NOT pharma drugs or the chemicals in foods, along with the poisonous injections forced into Americans bodies. Another attack on Freedom to Live as you choose. I’m sure electrical cooktop is okay. Power Companies say they are. Never mind the burning, carcinogenic foods. Just get a prescription from your doctor and you’ll be “healthy” again. Mike, I really enjoy all of your articles and your nevending help/advice to RV’er. Thank you!
Ours vents back inside RV like most all do. Kind of useless in that respect, other than MAYBE catching some splatter in the “filter”. May as well hold your head over the stove :() Please, don’t try that at home OR in your RV. 🙂
I use the vent to the outside occasionally. The roof vent in the bathroom is always cracked open. If you have an all electric house in California you have to have an generator because the electrical utilities aren’t reliable. Should be interesting when all you can buy is electric vehicles and battery powered devices. I’m sticking to petroleum powered devices up here in the mountains.
From what I know about asthma — it is fear-based and as usual — our “authorities” are eager to find another way to control everything we do rather than look at the real cause of a problem. Emotions cause serious problems in our bodies — but that is never to be discussed.
Autism is another problem that is being totally ignored. Big Pharma would never want their role in Autism to be investigated.
Our microwave/convection oven does not vent to the outside it simply recirculates the air through metal filters. We however have a fantastic fan just above the stove/oven and we run it every time the burners are on.
I do tend to agree with Dvjqwqe that the ultimate goal is to ban all gas appliances. California has already set the process in place to phase out new gas heaters by 2030, see NPR report dated September 23,2022. The bigger issue down the road is what will the RV industry do to meet requirements for the gas stove issue and in California in 2030 with the ban on gas heat sources both hot water and furnaces. Will RV park grids be able to handle the increase in electrical loads?
We don’t use the vent fan because it doesn’t vent outside.
We rarely use the gas range unless boon docking (in which case we are often cooking outside). If we have electrical hook ups we use induction. That said, our hood vent does not vent to the outside but recirculates so when using the hood vent we also run the Fantastic Fan so fumes from the stove top are carried up and out.
We use the vent fan whenever a burner is on — primarily to keep the smoke detector from going off, and also to minimize heat gain when it’s warm.
Now I guess we have another reason.
I can’t take the poll because I’m not sure what “too hot and smelly” means. And, there are more reasons to run the fan, such as cooking grease smoke, steam and vapors, cook’s comfort, onions burning the eyes, etc. So yes, it is advisable to always run the fan.
Our vent hood doesn’t vent outside. All it does is recirculate the heat and odor in the kitchen.
We have an 2021 Alliance Paradigm. It unfortunately doesn’t have an external stove vent (but will have one this summer). We’d use the vent if it had one but what we have to do is use the roof vent to pull out any stove byproducts.
I have a truck camper very confined, as a result I always have my vent open fan on.
The whole Idea that your going to get poison by the gas cook stove. How about vent free heaters that are sold that are Listed and approved to be used without venting. I really doubt anyone keeps the range on all that long. Sill green people. Get a life.
Every time we turned the stove on, the vent is running to the outside. Either in the house or RV, we vent to remove heat, smoke, grease and bad air, every time the stove is on. It keeps the walls and ceiling cleaner among all the surfaces in the living area. It only makes good common sense to do so.
I don’t worry about my gas stoves polluting my home or RV. I’ve lived in a gas stove household all my 77 year long life without any ill effects. Natural gas is mostly methane, with mercaptan and a small level of contaminants. Methane (CH4) combusts to CO2 and H2O which are both already abundantly present in room air. We exhale the same stuff when we breathe. My house has a ventless hood that basically catches most of the grease particles in a grease trap, but does nothing for any other pollutants.