how do you set the clock on a Kucht range hood?

July 5, 2021 10:45 PM

Exactly what it says on the box. This is easily the most difficult clock I've tried to set on any appliance, ever. There is nothing about it in the instruction manual. The Kucht wall-mounted range hood seems to run on its own time. Have you set the clock on it? How? What do I press? Is there a secret password? Please, dear God, does anyone know?
posted by Miss T.Horn to Home & Garden (15 answers total)

This is the best manual I found for the range hood buttons: http://kucht.com/manuals/Kucht-Hoods-Manual.pdf

Still nothing about settings the clock, but I'd start with holding power for ~5 seconds, and then start holding combinations of power and one other button at a time for ~5 seconds, etc.

Looking for videos and whatnot seems to be a wasteland filled with spam, trying to get people to buy home appliances via their affiliate links. Good luck!
posted by Anonymous Function at 11:18 PM on July 5, 2021 [2 favorites]

Best answer: I don't know, but the last time I dealt with a clock I couldn't set, I just unplugged it, waited till midnight/noon and plugged it in. Most electric clocks start on 12:00 and then it's just a matter of adjusting yourself relative to Daylight Savings.
posted by blnkfrnk at 11:27 PM on July 5, 2021 [19 favorites]

It might have the same controller chip in it that you find in every cheap stopwatch, and therefore overload its control buttons in the same bizarre ways. That might take the impossible task facing you now down to the slightly less difficult one of figuring out which button is which.
posted by flabdablet at 11:53 PM on July 5, 2021

I could only find a video for a different brand, but it's worth a try: AKDY Range hood - setting the clock
posted by rakaidan at 12:44 AM on July 6, 2021

Have you tried calling them? They are based in NJ and you could get a person on the phone.
posted by computech_apolloniajames at 3:18 AM on July 6, 2021 [1 favorite]

Press the clock/delay button

Press -/+ to set the hour

Press clock again

Press -/+ to set the minute

Press clock again to finish.

This was a total pain to find by the way. What worked in my search was adding the quoted phrase "set the time" (vs just set and time)
posted by zippy at 9:40 AM on July 6, 2021 [4 favorites]

Zippy's procedure matches the instructions in this manual.
posted by beandip at 12:09 PM on July 6, 2021

Response by poster: I wish Zippy's instructions worked, but there are no +/- buttons on my particular model. Thanks for the suggestions. Going to have to try to call them or attempt the plug in at midnight method.
posted by Miss T.Horn at 10:06 PM on July 6, 2021

What model number do you have?

If not known, could you post a photo of the front panel?
posted by flabdablet at 10:23 AM on July 7, 2021

Response by poster: This is it. It's got 3 fan settings to the left of the indicator screen, and a timer, light, and on/off button to the right of it.
posted by Miss T.Horn at 12:26 PM on July 7, 2021

So the front panel is not the same as the one shown in this photo, which is supposed to be of the model number from the Lowe's page you linked?

https://kucht.com/online/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/KRH3011A.jpg
posted by flabdablet at 1:07 PM on July 7, 2021

It's got 3 fan settings to the left of the indicator screen, and a timer, light, and on/off button to the right of it

So does the AKDY range hood in this instructional video (which is not for the same AKDY model as the one rakaidan linked above). If the Kucht button layout and display look similar, there's a good chance they use the same controller.

AKDY's process starts with a long press on the timer button, which is a move that only an engineer who has been buried in designing these things down to a price for far too long would ever think of as intuitive. Does anything interesting happen on the Kucht display if you long-press the timer button?
posted by flabdablet at 1:18 PM on July 7, 2021 [1 favorite]

Best answer: I posted a question on the "community questions" section of the Lowe's page linked above, and got an answer directing me to this page at kucht.com:

https://kuchtcare.com/online/hood-clock-configuration/

The KRH3011A is listed as a wall mounted hood, but the controls shown in the video for wall mounted hoods don't match your description. Those in the under-cabinet video do, though, so I imagine that's the procedure to use.

Note that the first move is to press the clock icon when the hood is powered off, which seems really bizarre to me because the icon's not even lit up then. Not at all surprised you didn't find it by experimenting.

I had also asked where I could download a manual that described the controls, but all I got was a link to the product page where I can download a skimpy six page installation manual that doesn't.

Gotta say, I'm totally underwhelmed by Kucht's level of attention to detail here. I hope their engineering is better than their online documentation.
posted by flabdablet at 4:38 AM on July 9, 2021 [1 favorite]

Response by poster: Thank you!!!
posted by Miss T.Horn at 5:16 PM on July 9, 2021

Does that mean it worked?
posted by flabdablet at 7:34 PM on July 9, 2021