Fume Cupboards
Supplied, installed and commissioned across the UK
We supply fume cupboards either standalone or as part of a wider laboratory furniture and extraction installation. Whether ducted or filtered, educational or commercial, we have considerable experience in this sector and can advise on what suits your space, your substances and your budget.
As our management is accredited with the Institute of Local Exhaust Ventilation Engineers (ILEVE), the same people advising on specification also understand what the installed system will have to demonstrate at its statutory examination, which is not always the case with a furniture supplier.
Ducted or filtered?
This is usually the first decision to be made, and it shapes the cost of a good deal of what follows.
Ducted fume cupboards discharge to atmosphere through ductwork and a fan, typically at roof level. They handle the widest range of substances and are the default for most chemistry applications. The trade-off is building work: you need a duct route, a suitable discharge point, and make-up air to replace what's extracted, which has implications for your heating load.
Filtered, or recirculating, fume cupboards pass extracted air through filter media and return it to the room. No ductwork, no discharge point, and they can be relocated. The constraint is that filtration must be matched to the specific substances in use, filters have a finite life and need monitoring and replacement, and not every application is suitable. They suit refurbishments where duct routes are impractical, or where a space needs flexibility.
If you are unsure which applies, tell us what you are working with and we will advise accordingly, including where a filtered unit would not be appropriate.
Integrated with your furniture
A fume cupboard rarely sits in isolation; it needs a base or support structure, services routed to it, and worksurfaces that meet it cleanly. Supplying the cupboard alongside the surrounding laboratory furniture removes the interface risk created by splitting the two across separate suppliers, where responsibility for the junction between bench and enclosure can fall between the two.
Our 3R, Cleanline, Pedestal and FlexModular ranges can all accommodate fume cupboard installations, with worksurfaces specified in Trespa Toplab or other chemical resistant materials to suit the application.
Sectors
We've supplied and installed fume cupboards for education, pharmaceutical and commercial R&D, public health and industrial clients, working both directly with end users and as a subcontractor to main contractors. See our portfolio for examples, or our clients page for the range of organisations we've worked with.
Two recent installations show the range. At the University of West London the brief covered a set of laboratories rather than a single room, and mobile fume cupboards sat alongside height adjustable serviced benching. At SBZ Corporation in Basildon we installed a wall-mounted Alsident System 75 arm in place of a full cupboard, capturing at source without the ductwork a cupboard would have required.
Face velocity, containment and BS EN 14175
The European standard for fume cupboards is BS EN 14175, published in several parts. Two of them matter to you as a specifier. Part 3 covers type test methods — the tests a manufacturer runs on a model under controlled laboratory conditions. Part 4 covers on-site test methods, which is what your particular cupboard is measured against once it is standing in your building. A cupboard described as “to BS EN 14175” has almost always been type tested under Part 3, and that is a statement about the model rather than about your installation.
Face velocity is the average speed of air drawn in through the working aperture, and it is the figure most specifications lead with. Around 0.5 m/s at a stated sash height is the commonly specified design figure, with 0.3 m/s widely treated as the floor below which containment stops being dependable. It is worth knowing that this is a band rather than a minimum to be exceeded: pushing face velocity much above the design figure creates turbulence at the sash plane, and that turbulence can carry contaminant back out towards the operator. Faster is not safer.
Face velocity is also not the same thing as containment, which is the point most often missed. Type testing under Part 3 uses a tracer gas to measure what actually reaches the operator’s breathing zone, because that is the question the cupboard exists to answer. Room conditions then decide whether the model’s performance survives contact with your building — a door on a swing, a walkway behind the operator, a supply air diffuser discharging across the sash, or a second cupboard competing for the same make-up air. A cupboard that passed its type test can still fail in the room, which is why the on-site testing in Part 4 and a properly recorded handover baseline carry the weight they do.
Installation, commissioning and beyond
We install and commission what we supply, establishing the baseline performance figures against which future examinations will be measured. Recording that baseline properly at handover matters rather more than it sounds, since without it later testing has nothing meaningful to compare against.
Once installed, your fume cupboard becomes subject to statutory Thorough Examination and Test under COSHH Regulation 9, at intervals of no more than 14 months. We carry that out nationwide, including on equipment we didn't supply.
Gallery
Our fume cupboard and LEV work is led by Gary Sprawling, Managing Director, accredited by the Institute of Local Exhaust Ventilation Engineers (ILEVE).