Sloane

Good for you, for proper venting - is this a total remodel?

Do you have plans drawn? do you have a cab over the range, is range on exterior wall?

All of this will come into play when choosing hood/vent.
I went with Zephyr under cabinet hood - I like the sleek, relatively hidden design - simple vents straight out to exterior. Ours is 850 CFMs
400 CFMS even with out grease, wok is pretty minimal - I would rec going up to at least 500-600

Here is a link that might be useful: zephyr

Thanks jejvtr - yes, total kitchen remodel, literally tearing down old one and building new (ack!). Plans being drawn now, which is partly why I am trying to figure out vent/hood configuration with designer. We are hoping for range on exterior wall with a cabinet over to house hood. I'll look into the Zephyr.

Of course, post should say 30" not 30' range - oops!

What does 500 dollars represent? The budget for the hood or the budget for the ventilation system (hood plus duct work and vent)? If it's the former, you can probably find all sorts of things, including any number of 600 cfm systems that are on sale. And I'd look into 500-600 cfm, because you don't have to use the max setting when you don't need it but (a) the unit will function great on an intermediate setting and (b) total price for an installed system will be similar and you don't want to go through the hassle and expense of finding a hood, getting it and the accompanying ventilation installed, only to come up short with its capacity.

But if it's the latter . . . well, I'm all for setting a budget so that things don't spiral out of control, but I think you might want to investigate the total system cost before drawing any particular line in the sand on the budget for the hood itself.

I have a 600 cfm vent-a-hood which I operate 70% of the time on low. From my reading on the subject, capture area is possibly more important than capacity, so you should be fine with 400 cfm, provided you buy a large enough hood and mount it close enough to the cooking surface.

We had a Broan AP130 over our old electric 30 inch range, which was pretty adequate. It did not really project far enough over the front burners to do much for them, so I would do smoky or greasy cooking on the rear burners. It was a very decent hood, not too big, and we bought it for a very reasonable cost. If your range is on an exterior wall, total purchase plus install on a hood like this would be around your $500 budget. I believe this hood has 440 cfm.