11-17-2013, 04:47 AM
A photo of the setup would help a lot.
Lacking that, I'll go out on a limb and suggest that the apartment may have originally had a coal or wood stove where the modern stove is now and whoever did the renovation decided to use the original stove's chimney as an outlet for the range hood exhaust fan. While that's not a problem in and of itself, it can quickly become one if the chimney is crumbling or becomes blocked by bird's nests, in which case the exhaust fan would blow detritus back into the kitchen.
Lacking that, I'll go out on a limb and suggest that the apartment may have originally had a coal or wood stove where the modern stove is now and whoever did the renovation decided to use the original stove's chimney as an outlet for the range hood exhaust fan. While that's not a problem in and of itself, it can quickly become one if the chimney is crumbling or becomes blocked by bird's nests, in which case the exhaust fan would blow detritus back into the kitchen.