OVIEDO, Fla. – LaurieJean in Oviedo told us she was able to get her new stove-top microwave installed but she couldn’t get the microwave exhaust to connect to her old roof vent pipe!
This is important because over-the-range microwaves often have a vent fan that can blow cooking vapors (smoke, oil, grease fumes) up and out of your kitchen through a vent pipe.
LaurieJean had an old vent pipe connected to her old microwave but didn’t know how to connect the old pipe to the new microwave, mostly because the pipe was quite large and not in line with the microwave.
We purchased:
Vent hood boot
Duct tape
We brought with us:
Metal cutters
We recommend:
Use gloves!
Step 1
Measure. The standard size of a microwave exhaust vent opening is 10″ x 3 1/4″, but you’ll have to measure your old vent pipe diameter. LaurieJean’s was 7.5″ – a rather unusual size (usually pipes come in round numbers like 6″ or 7″).
Step 2
Go shopping. We didn’t exactly know what we were dealing with so we bought a couple different-sized vent hood boots. The piece that LaurieJean was missing is called a vent hood boot – it’s an aluminum piece that has a rectangle opening on one end (to go over the microwave exhaust opening) and a round hole on the other end (to connect to the pipe). We bought boots with a 6″ opening and a 7″ opening. If you know what size your pipe is then you’ll know what to shop for.
Step 3
Install. Try and work the boot onto the top of the microwave (the rectangle end) and slide the opening of the boot under your old pipe. LaurieJean’s case was tricky because once we put the boot in place, there was a large gap between the end of boot and end of old pipe. So we took the old boot that previously connected to the old microwave and cut it down with our metal cutters to fill the gap and then we worked that transition piece into place.
Step 4
Tape it. We used duct tape because, of course, these are ducts we’re connecting! We placed the tape around all of the connection points to make sure that none of the fumes or vapors escaped from the pipes. More tape is better than less tape.
You just got results at home!
If you have a project you’d like Erik to tackle, send us an email at GettingResultsAtHome@wkmg.com and next week Erik might just show up at your door!