I have a 48" Bluestar RNB with grill and griddle. Using the grill can create a ton of smoke. I have a 54"x27" 1200 CFM Ventahood that sucks every last bit of smoke out when I am grilling. It looks just like in a Restaurant, where the smoke leaves the grill and is pulled straight up and gone.

I really think the 3" overhang on each side of the range and the 27" depth is the way to go when you are creating a dish that is giving off a lot of smoke on front burners. I have not yet testing cooking anything overly smokey on the front burners yet, but everything I have tried, the 27" captured it. On my old setup, which was a 30" Viking with a 30"x24" Vent-a-hood, when cooking on the front burners, I would often get smoke leaking around the front and into the kitchen.

30" bluestar with a 36"W x 24"D 600 CFM vent-a-hood over it. it works well, although when i stir fry or sear a steak we do get some smoke, especially if i use the front burner. could've probably gone deeper and higher CFM, but it's not all that big a deal since i don't really use those cooking methods very often.

Currently at lake house: 42'' x 24'' 600 cfm VAH over a Dacor PGM365 cooktop.

Similar experience as edlakin, although I'm less happy with it. I can easily overwhelm it when searing (just last weekend, I was searing salmon over the front 18K burner and holding a cookie sheet to the side of the hood trying to hold more smoke in the hood so it would exhaust).

I have been a modest VAH detractor on this forum. I find that it's 1) noisy 2) not fabulous in performance (I think it acts like a 600 cfm hood, not a "900 cfm equivalent" the way VAH claims 3) a pain to clean, particularly given the posts here that suggest that putting the "squirrel cage" into the DW results in the paint peeling off of it. That means I hand wash it, which is a yucky pain. I think it's well built but not "state of the art."

Now, sitting on my unfinished countertop is my new Modern Aire custom 64'' hood liner waiting to go into the alcove. We also have the Fantech FKD 10XL blower and the LD10 silencer installed in the attic. That should be close to "state of the art". The hood liner looks solid as a rock, and I'm anxious to report back about performance and noise, which I'll do as soon as we have a working kitchen, hopefully in the next 4 weeks.

Anyone else? I would prefer the 27" depth but we've run out of room to run the 10" line and we need to find a unit with about 1200 cfm using a 8" duct line. In most cases, that puts me into 24" depth and making it overhang by 3" on each side. Any other suggestions for good models to look at? Thanks.

you can always get a 24" deep model and then simply bump it out three inches.