Skyline Frame Island
hood from Berbel: it
drops down from the
ceiling to an adjustable
height via remote control
THROW OUT THAT OLD EXTRACTOR
- AND BRING IN A BERBEL
Steve and Jeanette Flanagan could not
see the back of their old kitchen extractor
quick enough. “It just didn’t work, and it was
impossible to clean,” said Steve. “We were
planning a new kitchen and decided to do
without one - it just wasn’t worth it.”
The Flanagans had the same problem faced
by so many long-suffering users of traditional
kitchen hoods: steel mesh fat filters long
gummed up with cooking residues, resistant
to even the most persistent of dishwashers -
automated or human - and thus unable to produce
clean and healthy recirculated air.
A carbon-filled filter, renewable every two or
three years, does the same with cooking smells
- a godsend for many modern, open-plan homes.
Ergoline 2 kitchen head space hood
from Berbel
Users had to constantly breathe in unfiltered air and remove a thin
fatty coating covering every conceivable kitchen surface - the very
issues extractors are designed to prevent.
Then one day they met two fellow dog-walkers who just happened
to run Casalife, a business designing and selling German kitchens
and including a completely different method of air extraction. It was
based just two miles away.
Steve said they were interested and a few days later invited the
company’s husband and wife team, Jacqueline and Karl, round to
talk kitchens.
What attracted the Flanagans was Casalife’s unique line in kitchen
hoods produced by the German manufacturer, Berbel - the only
products on the market with no fat filters. Instead, they use a
patented centrifugal force system to separate off 97% of fat, oil
and steam into an internal, removable tray that can be easily wiped
clean.
In fact, analysis by the independent German
product testing lab, SLG, shows Berbel hood fat
extraction levels remained consistently high at
between 85-89% throughout 30-, 60-, 90- and
120-minute periods, whereas conventional
filter-led models only reached 63% across 30
minutes and plunged to just over 35% across
120 minutes.
For Berbel, performance also goes hand in hand with
design. The company, which had already won a dozen international
design awards since 2010, most recently clinched the prestigious
international 2019 ‘Best of the Best’ Red Dot Design award for its
Skyline Frame ceiling lift hood (see photo). It was d
escribed by judges
as “a fascinating new aesthetic for the kitchen. Its clear geometric
lines give it the appearance of an object floating in mid-air… it fits
seamlessly into almost any given kitchen interior”.
Skyline is just one of Berbel’s 19 extractor lines that also include
wall-mounted models, headroom hoods (flueless and tilted to give
an unhindered view of the hob), table lift hoods - housed below
the surface until needed, built-in hoods (fixed or lift design) and
- particularly for smaller kitchens - hobs with a built-in extractor
fan that sucks air downwards.
What did the Flanagans decide? “We changed our minds about
extractors!” says Steve. “We signed up for a B
erbel Ergoline 2 extractor
[see pic] and now a year later admit we could not live without it! ...”
www.casalife.uk