My biggest concern is noise and capture area. I understand the first choice give me a bigger capture area, but will the motor being located on outside wall really reduce noise by enough to justify the additional cost? Consider that the exterior blower will still be only maybe a foot above and 6 inches away from the actual range hood. A path to the noise, if you will, is right down the blower line. A blower in the unit will only be closer by a foot or so to where I will be standing and cooking.

This is an interesting decision for me and I am looking forward to your comments.

BTW, in the other thread I have decided on the Leihberr refrigerator. Trevor, an order is forthcoming...

My suggestion is to go with the high-capacity insert and the 1600 cfm remote/inline blower if that doesn't blow out your budget. The reason being running a 1600 cfm blower at 1200 or more likely 900 cfm during daily use is going to be less noisy than the internal 1200cfm blower no matter how you cut it. Look to see if the blower comes with a rubber or other vibration isolating material between it and the wall. Talk to your HVAC person about blower/motor vibration/noise isolation. They might have options mere mortals like us don't know about.

I too am ordering the 48" Culinarian with a prestige hood. I drooled over the high capacity insert for a while but my wife and I actually don't like the "built-in" hood look so we're going with the PL hood which has a good capture cavity. It's too bad they don't make that with the high capacity insert.

BTW, not sure about your timing but Trevor told me Prestige ordering of the higher end stuff can take almost as long as what Capital is estimating for the Cunlinarian so best order quickly if your build is coming to a close.

Good Luck.

Thanks Amcock. I just got off the phone with Trevor and he concurs with you about the high-capacity insert. we didn't discuss the difference between the blowers so that will be our next conversation. I am actually doing an entire house remodel and the kitchen just hit the junk pile two days ago, so I have some time.

Looking like my choices are as follows for the kitchen:

Liebher 48 cabinet ready
Capital culinarian 48 6 burner/grill extra high capacity right back.
Miele speed oven
Miele Optima2 dishwasher panel ready
Prestige High capacity with 1200 cfm or 1600 cfm blower, exhausted through wall.
Yet to be determined panel ready trash compactor

We are getting pretty excited. I just scrapped all 'Frigidaire Gallery" appliances, so we are ready for a radical change.

Greg, I agree with amcook about going with a higher capacity blower to reduce the noise. I'm not sure how much noise reduction for the money you will achieve with a remote blower.

A word of caution - depending on the enclosure for the insert, some inserts may be too large for a particular enclosure design. I went through this when deciding on my hood. Whatever you are doing for the enclosure, you should coordinate with whoever is fabricating it regarding the insert size.

Congratulations on the Liebherr. Nice appliance selections!

Thanks. I went ahead and ordered the high capacity but stuck with the 1200 cfm due to the $700 bump.

I have also printed the install specs to hand to my builder as he is going to customize an enclosure for it

The price difference between the 1200cfm remote blower and the 1600cfm remote blower was $700?!? I could have sworn the difference with much less? What's the model number of the blower you're going with? I priced the RB1200 vs RB1600 which is roof mounted. Not sure if wall mounted is different but I thought the RB blowers could be wall mounted as well.

Not exactly.

My installation is on an exterior wall with only about a foot of 'run' so I am going with a 1200 cfm internal which is $450. The 1600 cfm only comes in a remote blower which was in the range of $1100.

Hmm.. I didn't think the high capacity insert could take an internal blower. I thought it required an inline or remote blower. At least that's what I remember from the spec sheet of the high cap insert when I researched it. Might be worth double checking to be sure.

Okay I will double check and thanks.

Because the High Capacity insert is the best insert for several reason, we have the blower installed inside the insert as a special order. In general the High Capacity does not come with internal blowers.

The problem for gregfl regarding which blower to us is the distance from the insert to the outside wall, when you only have 1'the noise reduction is minimal in relation to the extra cost, its not until you have 10' from hood to blower that you benefit from noise reduction. the closer the blower comes to the hood / insert the noisier it becomes.

Thanks Trevor. The cost factor also played into the decision because of my particular situation. I am going to have to live with a noisy motor no matter which installation I choose due to the lack of distance, so the extra $700 wouldn't give me the benefit Amcook is getting. Unfortunately. I probably would have spent the money in the blind if Trevor hadn't consulted with me. If I could get the benefit, I would spring for the exact install Amcock is doing.

Okay that was absolutely the last ever post I make from my iPhone with my apologies to Amcook. It seems my iPhone doesn't like the spelling of his name and, ahem, creatively modifies it to a less than desirable alternative. My apologies again.

no offense taken. Been called worse things I'm sure. :)

The internal blower does make more sense for your situation, both economically and installation wise, so it's great that Trevor was able to work with Prestige to make it happen. To be honest I'm a bit jealous of the high cap insert. I might have gone custom hood route if I didn't have a thousand other details to iron out. Ah well.

Good luck with everything.

Very interesting. Greg what are you doing about the custom hood? What material are you using? What's the process to get the Prestige liner and motor built in to your hood? It sounds like you have gotten a really good liner/motor combination with the Prestige.

Posting from my office computer!

Amcook, thanks for understanding. Frankly I have been mortified to log back in here after I discovered what my iphone was doing to me. :-(

Anyway, my builder is going to build a custom enclosure around it. I am not sure of the exact material as we haven't got to that stage yet. We just did the tear out the other day. It is hard to describe, but the enclosure looks like a chimney going up and disapearing into the ceiling. Only thing is, the ceiling terminates into my master bedroom and the vent has to go directly out the back.

This isn't exactly it, but this is the basic idea...

http://www.mldhooddesigns.com/product-zoom.html?images/Portfolio/4_Chateau_Hearth_Limestone_Texture.jpg

Gregfl - you may have been mortified by your iphone's typo, but it certainly leavened a heavy-night's reading. Amcook seems amiable enough to withstand it all...

Can you tell me how your decisions went? I seem to have the same setup; a 36" CC to vent immediately to the outside of a wall-installation. It seems that noise-mitigation will be minimal whether the blower is inline or remote as neither is more than a few inches from the cook's head.

I have some remedial questions, and hijacking your thread may not be the best way to pose them. But I am interested in hearing your experience and so may just see whether inquiries posted here as well inspire any kindly answers. As always I must apologize *profusely* in advance for what I should surely have been able to figure out already:

1. insert and liner. I am confused how these differ. Is the insert the part that houses the baffles? And then the liner is an optional bit that basically snugs the insert inside of the hood itself? Thus if you were to build a hood surround (as from the picture it looks like you have done), could you then skip the liner?

2. hood surround on a high-powered stove; role of liner. Someone noted elsewhere that with a stove that puts out a lot of btu's, there's a danger of incinerating the edges of a wooden hood when there's no liner. Is this a concern with your CC? Does this depend on how snugly the insert fits inside the hood? Am I not quite understanding the role of the liner correctly???

3. hood composition. If high-powered stoves can set fire to a wooden surround, ought they always to be of metal given the CC's output? I presume not as Trevor has advised you and he surely knows whereof he speaks. But this is part of what I'm wondering regarding your experience: is hood composition simply and always only a matter of aesthetics or is there a fire-hazard component to your decision? Or is the fire-hazard mitigated by the presence of a liner?

4. configuration of insert: in another thread 'mechanical' assistance in filtration was mentioned. Does this mean angling the baffles? I am guessing that having baffles at an angle increases surface area available for capturing fumes as basically the hypotenuse of a triangle is exposed to the fumes rather than one leg of the triangle. Am I getting that right? And if so, why does it matter; isn't the speed of air suction the parameter of interest in capturing fumes? Or -- oh, perhaps this is what "mechanical" means -- is it that the angle actually physically captures the smoke as well as then sucking it away??

5. noise related to size of motor. Why is it that noise would be less from a 1600 cfm operating at midrange of, say, 1200 cfm speed than a motor designed to operate at 1200 cfm on its highest speed? Is this just a vibration issue; is it presumed there would be less vibration in a motor's midrange than its high range even if both are running at identical speeds?

6. size of capture area. Is it advisable to "size up" over the size of the cooktop itself? Thus if sizing for a 36" range, wouldn't it be advisable to plan for, say, a 40" hood? Or at some point this must just be overkill. Is it as simple as estimating how far outside the 36" cooktop one's pans might extend in order to plan for hood-size or is there some other magical rule-of-thumb for planning?

Many, many thanks to anyone who might be inspired to answer my hood-101 questions. I have read many, many back posts about hoods and note there are some very technically savvy folks reading and posting out there. I really, really appreciate your willingness to share such knowledge.