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If I run my oven in the summer at 400F(~200°C) for an hour or two, this produces a great amount of heat.

Is this energy vented outdoors once the oven is turned off, or does it simply dissipate from inside the oven to the inside of my home? I suspect it is the latter since I've never seen ventilation going outdoors from an oven, but I'm wondering if this might be the case for other ovens/homes.

Running an oven in the summer while using air conditioning to counteract the heat seems like an extreme use of energy.

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    I like to turn the kitchen fan on and open the oven door to get it to cool down as quickly as possible after use.
    – user50726
    Sep 15, 2019 at 17:53
  • Some hot air comes out of the front of my household oven, and if I am baking with steam then steam comes out too. There is an extractor over the oven and if I switch it on it sucks in the hot air/steam and vents it outside. Does that count?
    – RedSonja
    Sep 16, 2019 at 7:22
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    You've already got the correct answer: oven heat comes into the house, eventually, always. Another posted usefully suggests running your hood vent, assuming it exhausts to outside and you can open a window nearby, but if it's hot out, you might wind up drawing more heat in from outside than the oven would dump into the room. FWIW, our household solution to this is a capable toaster oven (e.g. Breville) which is sufficient for 70-80% of our oven needs. In the summer, we just put it outside and cook/bake there. :) Sep 16, 2019 at 17:57
  • If you need AC largely for dehumidification, waste heat from the oven doesn't really hurt. It just allows you to set your thermostat higher without getting unbearably humid. Sep 16, 2019 at 22:53
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    If you vented the oven to the outside all your heat would be expelled and it wouldn't be much good for cooking....The whole idea of a modern kitchen oven is to have a box full of hot air to cook the food.
    – gnicko
    Sep 18, 2019 at 18:19

7 Answers 7

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I've never seen one that vents to outside, and I've used kitchens in several countries.

In many places we need to heat our houses for quite a few months each year, and the waste heat from cooking is very welcome. I try to avoid using my oven in summer, choosing other things to eat instead.

Note that modern ovens are designed to be well sealed and well insulated, but many have a fan to cool the space in which the oven is installed; that's the source of warm air into the room with the door shut.

You can minimise the heat produced (i.e. the electricity used by both the oven and the air conditioning) by opening the door as little as possible, and by only preheating if you really need to. A well-insulated oven can be turned off a few minutes early for many dishes as it will retain enough heat to carry on cooking. In other words - cook as efficiently as possible. The benefit of this is greater if you're using air conditioning.

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  • Possibly also use the fan if you have a fan-assisted oven/convection oven for faster cooking (beware opening it if fan is running however). Sep 18, 2019 at 10:13
  • Although this is an old answer, doesn't better oven insulation simply result in the heat from the oven being released into the home more slowly? During the cooking process, better oven insulation will be helpful, as less energy will be lost into the home, but after cooking is done, all that energy (heat) will have to go somewhere. Jul 24, 2023 at 0:23
  • @RockPaperLz-MaskitorCasket yes. That comes out in the discussion under one of the other answers. Some of it I only imply here
    – Chris H
    Jul 24, 2023 at 5:39
  • Thanks Chris. I'll add all the other answers to my reading list! Jul 26, 2023 at 18:48
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So it's not directly fighting the air-con in summer, my usual trick is …

Oven on, kitchen window open, kitchen door shut.
If you have an extractor hood that vents outdoors, that's going to help the job the open window is doing too.

After cooking, oven off - mine has fans that vent into the room, separate from the ones circulating the heat internally. They keep going long after the oven is switched off. That's lovely in winter but not so much fun in summer.
No matter how it achieves this, or whether you open the oven door to get the heat out faster, the laws of physics say that sooner or later, all the 'extra' heat in the oven will make it into your kitchen. There's not a thing you can do about that.

Leave window open [& extractor on, if applicable] & kitchen door shut until equilibrium is reached between indoors & outdoors, when oven is almost cold.

Close window, open kitchen door, let the air-con do its job once more.

It's imperfect, but until someone designs a cooker that will vent directly to the outside, in summer only, then it's the best you can do.

Depending on your architecture, it wouldn't be impossible to mount an extractor directly behind the oven, vented to the outside - though as I've never seen this done anywhere, I'm guessing grease build-up would make it either unsafe or just require so frequent strip/clean procedures that no-one considers it worth the effort. Link to local UK supplier of kitchen vent systems. Commercial kitchens have massive extractor hoods over the range area [which get cleaned every few months] but they're really to vent steam & grease, not to cool the room. Temperatures near commercial ranges in kitchens reach two degrees short of "Why on earth would anyone want to do this for a living?" even in winter.

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In order for the heat of the oven to be purposefully ventilated somewhere else, there would have to be not only a fan, but a back door in the oven and some way to trigger the opening of the door and turning the fan on and off.

There are no back doors in ovens.

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    Some ovens do have external cooling fans [mine does] - though they blow into the room, not to an extractor. It wouldn't be impossible to design them the other way… but no-one has, as far as I'm aware. A neat trick would be to have them vent out in summer & in in winter… but then we'd need your 'magic door' solution too ;)
    – Tetsujin
    Sep 16, 2019 at 8:14
  • @Tetsujin just a fan to more quickly bring the oven to room temperature (by raising the temperature of the room)?
    – RonJohn
    Sep 16, 2019 at 12:10
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    I think the intention is to keep the housing & surrounding kitchen units cool, prevent hot-spots.
    – Tetsujin
    Sep 16, 2019 at 12:12
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There are some ovens that vent outside, but these are the exception. Assuming we're talking a typical North American oven, check one of your rear burners; the oven is typically vented through there. For induction or radiant cooktops, there's usually a vent above the rear elements.

Obviously there's no easy way around this, but if you were feeling inventive you could probably rig up some insulated flexible metal tubing (i.e. dryer vent hose) to pipe the heat out a window or range hood vent while you're cooking something for an extended period.

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    I think the oven described in your first link has a built-in kitchen exhaust vent which sucks the air with kitchen fumes in from the cooking surface. It is an alternative to the more common exhaust hood. Its primary purpose is not to transport excess heat to the outside, at least not any more than an exhaust hood. Sep 17, 2019 at 14:03
  • Yup looks like the oven vent is in the downdraft vent at the cooktop surface. But, while not directly venting to the outdoors, I expect if one had the downdraft fan on, it would at least remove some of the heat. Seems like a wasted opportunity.
    – miken32
    Sep 17, 2019 at 14:18
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I have a swanky Viking oven that, when it decides to light and do some work, does exhaust heat to the outside via some interior fan. It is not the same fan as it has over the cooktop where you can see it sucking up smoke and cat hair. You can hear the interior fan go on about 5 min after the oven has been shut off.

So it is possible.

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    So there is a ventilation pipe that goes directly outside?
    – Behacad
    Sep 15, 2019 at 21:18
  • the outside of the oven, yes. Not the outside of the house unless the oven is outside the house.
    – jwenting
    Sep 16, 2019 at 4:59
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    @jwenting it's not inconceivable that there are ovens which are connected to the same pipes as an extraction hood. If that's the case, it's certainly possible and it seems sensible to have in hot climates where you don't want excess heat inside the house.
    – JJJ
    Sep 16, 2019 at 17:37
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I've never heard of an oven being vented to the outside. So, unless you have an exhaust fan that is vented to the outside, you're pretty much stuck with the heat.

Note, though, that the oven will gradually cool down after the energy source is cut off. The entire amount of residual heat will not dissipate nearly as quickly into your house as long as you keep the oven door closed.

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    The entire amount will eventually make it into the room, unless the back of the oven is against a very badly insulated outside wall. Heat has to go somewhere, it can't just vanish.
    – Chris H
    Sep 15, 2019 at 17:51
  • @ChrisH yeah exactly right.
    – Behacad
    Sep 15, 2019 at 19:49
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    While I agree with you guys, the heat cooling and gradually escaping has much less effect than just opening the door and letting the full heat go. Cooling does make a difference.
    – Cindy
    Sep 15, 2019 at 23:03
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    "The entire amount of residual heat will not dissipate into your house" sorry, but that's plain wrong.
    – njzk2
    Sep 16, 2019 at 3:17
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    @njzk2 we all know what they meant, so, since we're all being needlessly pedantic here: strictly speaking, they're right. uneven heat distribution asymptotically approaches equilibrium, but never reaches it. the residual heat will never completely dissipate into your house, as long as you keep the oven door closed (or otherwise). (note to OP: you can edit it to something along the lines of "will not dissipate nearly as quickly" to make us shut up)
    – user371366
    Sep 16, 2019 at 5:32
-1

No ovens are designed to ventilate outside. I actually tried making mini oven with vent connected to window but it not only failed to contain heat but also heated my room anyways.

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