It's mostly a logistics issue. Most downdrafts have the motors and blowers mounted in the space below the cooktop and where YOUR oven will be. There are some remote blower downdraft options but none are budget friendly in my opinion.

I have a Dacor 30" Dual Fuel slide in range with the Dacor downdraft. Everyone tried to talk me out of installing the range in the peninsula but it was what was going to work for me. I wanted to see through the space which overlooks my dining area and large windows. I absolutely love the set-up. My kitchen is over a garage so I was able to install the downdraft on the garage ceiling and vent it outside.

No complaints or problems with the range or downdraft.

Thanks, sankaty_91. I have been going back and forth with the GE Profile and the Bosch--I called GE, and they said their downdraft vent woudl work fine with the slide-in unit. Now I guess I just need to make that final decision about which brand! Ugh--I liked the Bosch because it has dehydrating capabilities, but the GE Profile seems to have more cubic feet capacity.

denversquare, I have the same problem with needing
downdraft. I have a Jenn air that I want to replace. What GE range and downdraft vent are you considering?

blondiel, I ended up getting the GE Profile 30" dual fuel slide-in range and the downdraft vent (Model #JVB94SHSS), on the recommendation of GE. BIG mistake--it turns out that they gave me incorrect advice--this downdraft vent does NOT work with the slide-in range, and this is causing huge headaches and a lot of wasted money. I feel like since I called GE and their company gave me incorrect advice about two of their products, they should make this right with me. I can't return the appliances to US Appliance because they are out of their original appliances and installed. They told me that since I don't have the name of the person I spoke to, they can't do anything. I told them I didn't get the person's name because I didn't think I would be in this position from their bad advice! The only record I have of calling them is my post on June 23 saying I spoke with them. Has anyone else had this experience with an appliance company and had a decent result?

It's been awhile since you posted, sankaty_91...I'm interested in knowing if your Dacor is still working well for you, and if you can tell me what Dacor downdraft model you have? It looks like all the the downdraft vents are supposed to be used with cooktops only...did you have professional help with installation? Thanks much!

We are in the same situation and was wondering what you ended up doing and consequently the results?

Thanks, Joel

We are in same situation with purchasing a GE profile. Did you go with Dacor or how did you resolve this?
Thanks,
Rich

I am looking to do the same thing in my kitchen. Why does it not work? Is it a problem with the duct work or is it something else.

I am looking for an electric slide range in that will accept a downdraft system. So far all I have found is the Dacor.My wife does not care for this range. Does anyone know of any other options?Most electric ranges have an outpocketing on the back that does not allow the downdraft to fit next to the range. Help!!!

I am in the same situation with an island range and the desire to put in a downdraft system. Any updates?

If it's gotta be a range, and it's gotta be downdraft, it'll either be Dacor, JennAir, or a vintage downdraft range from craigslist or something. You may be able to rig something up with other products, but I'm talking about approved, warrantied configurations here.

The fact that it's is amost impossible to find ought to tell you folks a thing or two. It violates the laws of physics for two objects to occupy the same physical space at once. The downdraft housing and motor goes under a cooktop, which is why it can ''work'' in those cases. But a range has an oven there, underneath the cooktop.

It also attempts to violate the laws of physics to suck hot naturally rising steam, grease, smoke, and odors downward. It's like trying to reverse the direction of the wind. You need such a powerful motor to actually do that that it creates all kinds of other problems. So in that sense, it really doesn't work at all.

Might check Thermador, not sure if they still make it, but we had a pop up remote blower (1000cfm) that actually worked quite well for 27 years, and we had an indoor grill!

Same situation here. Really like open feel of current but crappy Jenn air DD. is there not a telescoping DD unit (like the Faber) that can be used with a reliable slide in like a GE or Samsung ? If you could put the motor behind the DD unit instead of in front couldn't this work? I have room to do this in the knee wall behind the stove. Pls advise! Thx

As already mentioned - Dacor is the one manufacturer that approves this configuration

can you put the downdraft on the side? My sister had it that way and it worked.

Doesn't sound like anyone has solved this. I know some Downdraft units can have the blower mounted under the floor or remotely. So why can't a telescoping downdraft sit behind a slide in range with the blower mounted remotely? If anyone has done this, please share the details of the range model and the downdraft model.. Thanks!!

There are pop-up side-draft units, e.g., by Broan/Best, that occupy counter space outside the limits of a cooktop or range and which are ducted down and outside via underfloor ducting. They may be adequate for simmering bacon, and capturing steam. They will not be adequate for any serious hot greasy cooking because the plume velocity and volumetric flow rate will be too high for the pop-up flow rate to deviate an entire plume to the pop-up entry port. Even for modest cooking, grease or odor plumes should be generated at burners close to the pop-up. This subject is addressed in some detail in several threads on this forum. Sophie's second paragraph is too kind, and understates the difficulty of deviating the direction of mass air flow. Do not expect good results unless, like the OP, extreme cooking is simmering bacon.

What a nightmare this is. Our appliance rep recommended a GE pop up and yep you guessed it. It doesn’t work with a range. This is a new build and we had a downdraft vent placed in the foundation (cement, we live in FL). So now we are trying to find a downdraft that will fit in the existing island cabinet. Am I correct that the space behind the range requires room for the down draft AND a blower? God, this makes my head hurt.

I finally gave up and got rid of the downdraft Jennair.. I put in a standard Microwave/exhaust hood and ran the exhaust through the roof... The install location was an inside kitchen wall. I found a few (expensive- 2-4k plus the installation costs) downdraft add-on pop-up style hoods but they all required alot of room for the pop-up unit (a few inches) and blowers which are mounted either in adjacent cabinets, under floor or in a wall.. They all require some space behind the range or cook top. You can do a remote mounted blower that pulls the air, but you'd have to integrate the pop-up unit with the blower and run large ducts between them (most likely through the floor under the range to an exterior wall).. Btw, if you're moving the exhaust over any distances, you have to install large ducts (my old one ran about 30 feet and the ducts were 8-12 inches in diameter.. My brother in-law installed a Thermidor popup unit for his island cooktop in a condo but he had to do an inside vent, meaning it just goes through a charcoal filter into his living space.. He also lost half his adjacent cabinet for the blower. In the end for me it was just the path of least resistance to go standard up-draft, plus it just gave me so many more choices for oven, cooktops and exhausts.. I wish I had better news..

Thanks, Pantheon. I appreciate your candor.

We had an exhaust expert come by the house. Bottom line, he said he would never put a downdraft in his house and he installs them all the time.

Changing to a hood vent will completely mess up my room plans.

Thanks, Captain Obvious

Thought I would weigh in on this, as we are currently looking for a downdraft system and range for our kitchen island. We remodeled our kitchen 24 years ago and the kitchen designer used a Thermidor drop-in downdraft range. It was wonderful! 20 years with no issues, but finally started having a few. The Electronic board went out and they no longer made a replacement, the self-clean feature would no longer work, and a few other things, finally necessitating the need for a new one. Much to our dismay, we found the only ranges made now with the downdraft are a KitchenAid model and the Jennair. We ended up choosing the KitchenAid, HUGE mistake! Don’t even think about it! The first issue we noticed is that the stainless steel scratches if you touch it practically. A few weeks in, when the oven was heating, it would start making a screeching rattling sound. They replaced some fan down inside, but that did not fix it. From the first day the oven did not bake evenly. For instance, cookies would be well done in the back left corner while the ones in the right front corner or not yet done. We were told to turn the pan halfway through. Ever try that with a cake? Don’t. And so on. Now, we purposely did not purchase from a big box store, but the local reputable “Service after the sale” appliance dealer in our area with whom we have been in an ongoing battle for months. They have FINALLY agreed to take it out and apply the cost to a different one. I guess we will be looking at the Dacor ensemble.
By the way, our dealer tried to dissuade us from a downdraft, saying he didn’t think we would be happy with it. (Never mentioned that there was an option for a separate unit). We have a lovely custom kitchen with an open floor plan and a hanging hood would ruin the look of it. Besides that, we loved our Thermidor downdraft and to be honest, the one thing we’ve been really happy with on the KitchenAid WAS the downdraft! It does a fine job for that.
What a shame that there are so few options out there!

I just don't understand why so many think it is a bad idea to have a down draft for a slide duel fuel range. I currently have a 6 burner cook top (Dacor) that was installed in the island 20 some years ago, under the cook top is a large cabinet with sliding shelves. the motor and the mechanics of the downdraft are behind the shelves , i can not see them, because of the cabinet, the point is, there is plenty of room. The downdraft has worked fine, no need for a hood. I am about to redo the kitchen and was thinking about a slide in duel fuel range. My ventilation duct work is in place already, the island is 5x9 so plenty of space... I just don't get why so many think this is a bad idea. Many cooktops come with downdrafts , how is adding the electric oven under it going to make it not work, or not be enough ventilation.

M Losos: Please describe what you cooked when you determined that the down-draft ventilation worked fine.

I think the answer to your first sentence is to reread this thread, and any other threads here that a search on "downdraft" links to.

Consider a large hood with an actual 90 ft/min air flow (for example 1000 CFM through an 11 sq. ft. Hood, or 540 CFM through a 6 sq. ft. hood). Even with this air flow, almost all of the effort in getting the greasy humid cooking effluent plume to the hood is performed by the momentum of the rising and expanding plume. The breeze into the hood from its own blower is a lot less powerful than one might think.

If one were to somehow rotate such a hood and move it down so that its entry aperture was behind of the cooktop with horizontal airflow, it would be unlikely to pull plumes toward it other than the parts of those from rear burners that passed right next to the entry aperture. So it might partially work for back burners but not front burners, and then generally for those cooking plumes that have very low momentum, such as steam from simmering.

As a final touch, now gag this hood aperture with sheet metal so only a slot or array of perforations is presented to the rising plumes. In such a case, typical of pop-up downdraft systems, the ability to deviate rising plumes to the hood aperture is further degraded.

tl;dr: energetic high temperature cooking generates effluent plumes that require capture and containment from above. Side draft and down draft schemes cannot cope with this type of cooking. Commercial cooking zones don't use all that overhead sheet metal to impress the customers.

@Pantheon Consulting @Carmen MC @M Losos and any future parties. I had the same issue with my slide in. I found that it was possible to partially disassemble and reverse the GE UVD6301SPSS telescoping part and then essentially install with the blower assembly facing away from the range. I didn't trim out on the countertop perfectly, but I had a metal shop just cut a stainless trim piece and it has been working fine for years. YMMV. Note that the switch on the top in now on the left instead of the right. It takes some mechanical ability, but its one solution. see photo.

This is what we ended up doing for our telescoping downdraft with slide in range.
We had to move the motor to the other side, probably voiding the warranty. And, we added an additional blower.
It works great. This Best downdraft has good “sucking” power. The light has 2 powers and is damn bright. The filter is removable and washable.
Fingers crossed it never breaks. Just kidding, not really.

@dmann33

where did you dissemble to flip the telescoping part around? i just purchased the same downdraft vent and was also noticing if i flipped it around it would allow my range to slide up close to it. i had my cabinets already built to accomodate both the vent width and slide in range. just would like the vent to be next to thw surface of the range and not have 6 inches of countertop between them.

thanks

@ HU-350050612 I double checked. Its been a long time and I mis-remembered. The unit is actually sitting in backwards. The blower is then in the rear cabinet. I had to cut the a new intake hole in black metal that you see in my pic to match what was now facing to the rear. I Then covered the rough edge with the SS piece from the actual intake on the other side. I then covered the original intake with a piece of SS sheet cut by a local metal shop. You can see it in the on the back wall of my opening in my pic. It was more work than I wanted, but in the end. It worked and gets more than 95% of what comes off rear burners. Don't listen to the haters. Overhead Hoods high up miss a lot of stuff too.

@dman33: Sorry to see the misuse of the word "hate" here; I had hoped its misuse would remain limited to political disagreement. Fundamentals of fluid dynamics, backed by schlieren photography of actual cooking ventilation conditions inform hood design, not hate. Hot cooking plumes rise. "Suckage" [entraining air velocity] quickly weakens as one increases distance from air intake apertures. When connected to residential grade blowers, hoods will always win over pop-ups.

One can see that the falloff of air velocity with distance is best described as drastic if one views Fig. 6, section 30.4 of the 2003 ASHRAE Handbook HVAC Applications.* And the smaller the lesser of the two hood or pop-up aperture dimensions, the quicker the velocity falloff occurs. Making use of the plume upward momentum is essential for good capture, along with an entry area sufficient to overlap most of the plume.

Yes, overhead hoods can miss rising and expanding cooking plume effluent. This is a function of hood size and flow rate (CFM). For cooking involving hot oil or grease, plume "escape" with a properly designed conventional hood will always be less than any pop-up slot attempting to pull the cooking plume horizontally across the cooktop.

If flow rates are greatly mismatched, such as comparing a pop-up to an OTR microwave oven with afterthought cooktop ventilation, then a case might be made for the pop-up, at least for the restriction you mentioned: "rear burners."

To repeat my comment up-thread: "Commercial cooking zones don't use all that overhead sheet metal to impress the customers." One of the highest continuing costs for restaurants and commercial cooking enterprises is the energy cost of running their kitchen ventilation. If there were any improvement in fume removal efficiency by using pop-up downdraft ventilation, or even a conceptual horizontal (back of the cooktop) hood placement, commercial cooking stations would most certainly use them.

_____

*I'd scan the image, but I believe it to still be protected by copyright.

That image is comedy gold right there! So much money and effort wasted.

@CarmenMC - love your humor and we have a similar situation. We have an island w/ a slide-in range - new - as we did not know telescoping downdraft would not work... We replaced a broken JennAir with a built-in downdraft. What people in the chain don't understand is we have no other option nor do we have the $$$ to replace the new oven (that sat in the garage for 2 years)! We have everything needed under the floor and will buy a new blower yet am curious about what downdraft you bought and what blower you bought. Any information is appreciated... NOT KIDDING!

CarmenMC-I also would like to know how you installed the fan on the backside. This is something I need to do for a very similar situation. Very creative, would appreciate any advice you can give. Thanks

I'm at a loss. I'm debating not installing anything as can't seem to figure it out and overhead NOT an option... we bought this house w/ a Jenn Air w/built-in downdraft. I replace it w/ a slide in GE Cafe not thinking this would be so difficult.

We have cabinets on the front of the island. The extra blower we placed on one side of where the downdraft is. We cut a hole to connect the downdraft and the blower. It gets good flow. I can take pictures if you’d like.

Of course had we known this was going to be the issue I would have planned a double wall oven and a separate range top.

Carmen - would love a picture and a reminder of the brand you used - downdraft - and did you have to put it in backward?

and THANK YOU for replying. We do not have the option to do a downdraft based on our kitchen (under a loft) and the cost! And WHO KNEW!

Overhead venting is the only type that actually works.

That’s what they say.
However after 2 years, ours works great. I keep a very clean house. We have a open concept and do not see grease build up anywhere.

So sorry Sidney.

Here’s a photo of the extra blower

Xtra blower for the downdraft

This is the cabinet with the range and downdraft modifications

Thank you

…

Ahem. I believe flex aluminum ducting, as the above image appears to show, is prohibited for grease contaminated ducts. They have to be steel to resist fire penetration. Even if one chooses to ignore code, for safety's sake please routinely inspect and replace if build-up is detected. Alternatively, if the ducting were surrounded by steel in both cavities -- such as metal on all the cabinet surfaces -- it might be passible.

Thank you for your wise words.