The hardest working wall in the house is in the kitchen, where the cooktop, exhaust hood, sink and dishwasher will be installed. There’s a ton of blue and red PEX water lines roughed-in behind the insulation foam — and miles of electrical cable for switches, outlets, power for appliances. Plus framing structure, drains, lighting cans.
Standing back from the kitchen wall for an overview …The plumbers wrapped the blue and red PEX with insulating foam. Then the foam insulation was sprayed into the stud bays. Then the insulators shaved off the extra foam that stood proud of the vertical studs — shaving off some of the black foam and exposing the PEX inside.Here’s the red PEX, for a hot water line, with dark insulation shaved and the PEX exposed. This will be reinsulated with foam from a spray can.The exhaust hood has arrived, for test fitting against the hardest working kitchen wall. We need to know how high to mount it above the cooktop, and where to cut a hole through the wall for exhaust gases to be sucked out of the kitchen. The consensus is to put the hood as high as possible, to ensure anyone standing in front of the cooktop does not lean in and whack a skull against the horizontal bottom glass.Standing back from the kitchen wall four days after the first photo above. The red PEX is protected again with foam from a spray can. Cris from Ranserve installed sheets of plywood as blocking to mount the exhaust hood — and he began to cut the hole through the wall to eject exhaust gases out of the kitchen.
