The Golden State: Where & How to Live, Secure, Visit, Enjoy and Thrive in California
Kitchens & Kitchen Remodeling
The Kitchen Window
OXE of the first requisites in designing the layout of the kitchen is that of providing adequate window space. There must be windows for light, air, and ventilation. The light, if possible, should fall on the working areas— the sink, range, work table, and cabinet. The air must cool the small kitchen overheated with cooking. The ventilation should be such that cooking odors and the smells from culinary activities are carried out of the kitchen, away from the house, fresh air coming in in its place; and when in winter doors and windows are close 1 against the cold, there must still be a circulation of fresh air coming in and kitchen
odors going out.
This happy situation is achieved only by the means of ventilators of one kind or another. There are simple devices such as holes made in the frame of the window and screened outside, through which there is always a small but steady current of air—inwards. This provides no way of enticing the kitchen air outwards. There are various types of sliding-screen ventilators, simple devices made like a small window screen and used at the base of each window. There are among the most advanced and effective types the electrically operated whirling fan ventilators, which are fitted in the upper part of a window, and which set up the necessary suction to carry out the hot kitchen air as it rises from the range and work table.
No matter with how many windows the kitchen is provided nor how perfect is their relationship to each other for cross ventilation and circulation of air, this type of ventilator, costing only about $25 and averaging but a few cents a day to operate, is almost a necessity in a busy kitchen.
Window styles have undergone radical changes in design and operation. There are, of course, thousands of houses newly equipped with the old type of two-pane, two section window, one section above lowered to admit air, or the lower section raised for the same purpose. But recently developed kitchen windows are of the casement variety, and they are gradually assuming more and more importance to the home builder. The problem of screening, ventilation and curtaining with the casement window was until recently so bother- some that housewives rebelled against them, in spite of the artistic design. But the improved modern casement is not only better in appearance, but its design provides every answer to the ventilation question, it permits simple, effective, and attractive screening, and the curtain styles possible with this window are as varied and beautiful as with any other type. Among the designs available for kitchen windows are metal casements which have a crank style, geared adjuster.
