You win. Blue Star + wok cooking + ceiling mount application = 42" hoood in my book.

You win. Blue Star + wok cooking + ceiling mount application = 42" hoood in my book.

Ditto.

Some interior designers think kitchens are for reading the Sunday Times with a cup of joe not for actually cooking food.

Ask your wife if she is ok with cleaning the grease off the cabinets sufficiently and repainting the walls a majority of the time.

A hood wider than the range will give you better entrainment of smoky fumes. However, a little wok fumes escaping every now and then will not kill you. People used to cook in their homes all the time with NO ventilation at all and they did fine.

Anyway, we have a 36" hood above our 36" Bluestar, also mounted in a peninsula with an island style exhaust hood that is rated at ~350CFM and it works fine. Perfect, no. Fine, yes.

Yes, a bigger hood would be optimal, but in the grand scheme of things, your wife is right. For almost every cooking event the 36" hood will do fine, particularly if we are talking the same CFM rating. And on those few occasions where you are putting out beaucoup smokage from the wok or whatever, there's a good chance you would not be getting it all either with a 42" with the same CFM rating.

Honestly, I think you will like having the extra shelves better after you see how a 900 CFM-rated hood works. It will cover most of your needs.

If you haven't configured your Bluestar yet, you might consider opting for one of your 22k Ultranova burners to be installed in the center-front of the range. Your wok on this burner will have the best angles for fume capture if you don't mind the placement otherwise.

So I would advise going with your wife's opinion on this one. Best of luck with whatever you decide.

If the cooking that puts grease effluent into the burner's thermal plume is always heated using the burners in the middle of the range, then the 36-inch hood may be wide enough. This seems to be a significant imposition, though.

More worrisome is the open space concept. The less the effluent is constrained, the larger the hood has to be. And the larger the hood, the more cfm needed for exhaust and MUA. Your design isn't clear to me from your comments, but you may need a island hood for your application that overlaps the cooking surface on all four sides.

Keep in mind that the more open the area, the greater the cross drafts are, even from persons moving about. This type of disturbance will tend to move the plume centroid away from the center of the burner causing more of the plume to miss the hood if the hood is too small.

If at a wall but with open shelving, I would certainly want a wider hood. Not only is the uncaptured effluent going to spread through the house until it sticks or is removed by air exchange, but the contents of those shelves will be routinely coated.

One option for a wall space would be a 36-inch hood with "side curtains." These are stainless steel (or whatever) panels that connect to the sides of the hood and extend downward until low enough that the expanding effluent cone radius is smaller than the distance to the curtain. This may be a solution lacking aesthetic charm, however.

kas

We have a 36" rangetop and we thought the 36" wide hood looked really dinky. We bumped out the rangetop plus a couple of narrow side cabinets and expanded the range hood. It looks SO much better!

I don't really understand where yours is going but if you have cabinetry on either side, larger will look better I think . . .

With open shelving above the island, you will want all possible grease removal from your kitchen. That means a 42" wide hood, and it also means a DEEP hood as well. Otherwise every single time that you go to use anything you have stored on those shelves, you'll be handwashing it first.

BTW, you may need the storage, but the shelving looming above the island will visually and psychologically close in the space unless it's too high to reach without a step stool. You might as well have a wall there with a wall hood. You'd get more and better storage without the problems.

""People used to cook in their homes all the time with NO ventilation at all and they did fine""

That is a matter of opinion. Whereas someone may think repainting interior walls every few years is just standard up keep, the 21st century has proven otherwise. Same thing applies to redoing cabinets, floors, and everything else within vicinity of where you cook, including YOUR health. And I'm not even addressing air quality. I'm not saying a 6 inch difference on a ventilation hood will dramatically affect the air quality in your house. But it could and that would be enough for me.

Cooking creates heat, odor, grease, steam and smoke. Do you want me to list all the things this can damage, including health wise?

Whoa! Settle down, folks! I am not advocating that the OP or anyone else abandon kitchen ventilation. All I am saying is that a 36" hood works okay with a 36" Bluestar range. I know it does because I happen to have them in my kitchen in precisely the arrangement the original poster asked about. I also had the experience of using the same hood over a 30 inch range and what I am asserting is that the practical difference I see would not justify wrecking cabinet symmetry or storage space in very tight quarters just to get an overlap that will be mostly superfluous.

I also happen to think that since this is a small kitchen with very tight storage, shelving should not be simply tossed out the window as a non-consideration because some people think their turbinates will fall out at the first snort of Mazola vapor.

I also happen to think that for this one item the guy should not be making a big stink when his wife and the decorator are trying to optimize storage. It is NEVER a good idea to dispute your wife's wishes when it comes to kitchen design, particularly when the hood will move 900CFM. That is a HUGE hood. It is going to sound like a jet. It will handle the Bluestar okay and whatever bit of cooking schmutz that *might* sneak past that big blower will not be enough to cause injury to anyone or anything.

I am curious. That smell that you smell when you cook? What do you think that is? That smell you get up your nose as you take your hands and waft the steam towards your face above a lovely pork roast or rack of lamb or pot of soup?

That is what we are *really* talking about here. Cooking odors are part of life. We evolved smelling them.

They make us happy.

And so long as they are managed properly such that we do not asphyxiate ourselves or lard up our cabinets too much, then there is simply no requirement to panic.

I assert that reasonable compromises can be made with any kitchen appliance in the real world, and that includes kitchen ventilation. The presence or absence of a 3" overlap on a 900CFM exhaust hood just happens to be one of those things that *can* be compromised.

I KNOW this to be true because I have direct personal experience with it, and simply decided to share that experience here. If anyone thinks differently, fine! I am perfectly happy for you to have anything up to and including a 747 jet engine with an intake that serves as your entire ceiling just in case you might otherwise get a whiff of spaghetti sauce in your kitchen.

Thanks to everyone who replied. I'm the OP and certainly didn't expect such strong responses, but they're greatly appreciated.

I did end up caving in and going with the 36" hood (with 1,000 CFM). My wife is well aware that it'll be loud when at full blast, but the recirculating vent we have now is a POS that's loud and doesn't really do much else. So anything will be an upgrade.

She's also aware of the potential of more grease and such I also ended up doing as mojavean suggested and reconfigured the burners on the BS to mitigate it. The middle two will be 22K, I'm keeping the back left as a simmer and the rest will be 15K.

I figure the majority of my cooking will be done on the center two burners so 36" of hood above that should be plenty. I think that this set up could arguably provide better ventilation than if I had my 22K at the front right or left and still kept a 42" hood as now the hottest burners will be directly under the middle of the hood. And while there will be the rare occasion when I'll have all 6 burners going at the same time, god help me if I need all 6 going at full blast.

So a 36" hood over a 36" range will be sufficient the vast majority of the time. Yes, it's sub-optimal. But it should work.

As for the open shelves looming psychologically, we've seen a few other kitchens in person that our interior designer has done with open shelves set up similarly and we actually had to be reminded later by her that we saw them. Meaning that they were successful in being unobtrusive.

I think the real argument could be if I should go for a 30" range vs. a 36" (keeping the 36" hood) but on that point I refused to budge.

""""I'm looking for help"""" in settling a debate over the width of the hood to go over my 36" Blue Star which will be in a peninsula.

Contrare:

So 6 against and 1 for............didn't really matter what anyone advised. Your home, your set up so you can do what you want.....and we're not really helping(there's that word again) anyways, we're just spouting a bunch of nonsensical techno-speak.

"""Cooking odors are part of life. We evolved smelling them.

They make us happy""" This is correct.....most of the time....but not when they linger. I wish I could smell what everybody else is having at every restaurant I go to but most of the time the only thing I smell is garlic or some pasta dish.....must not be ventilated well. How come I can't smell the steaks or fish on the grill, I'm only 20 to 30 feet from the kitchen....Aaargh.

"So a 36" hood over a 36" range will be sufficient the vast majority of the time. Yes, it's sub-optimal. But it should work""" Yeah....except it would not pass code in a new home in my town.

What town would that be, aprince? I would like to see that code myself. Is the regulation online?

aprince? Can you or can you not cite the regulation from "your town" or any town, for that matter, that would make the OP's hood illegal??

I am serious. I have several times looked for legal guidance when it comes to ventilation of *residential* cooking gear and have not been able to find anything. You would be doing us a service by POINTING OUT a city where something like that exists.

If there is a code that says what I am doing is illegal then I would like to see it, as would, I am sure, other GW readers interested in big-BTU residential ranges.

Thank you!

42 all the way. I have it over my 36 berta. The capture of the 42 is great, and I only have 650CFM. Here is a picture of my range/hood combo. Personally I think a 36 over a 36 wouldn't look right. Looks and works a lot more "professional" in this combination.

I have to side with aprince on this one. This is a common occurence. Someone knows that I'm an "expert" on something--home theater, lawn care, kitchen ventilation. They come to ask for "my advice." In reality, what most people want is for the "expert" to confirm the opinion that they have (often incorrectly) come to.

IMHO that's exactly what the OP has done here. "I want advice." Gets advice. Ignores advice and attempts to justify his preconceived opinion--"we evolved smelling kitchen odors." PUHLEASE!

Here are the facts. A 36" hood over a 36" range will suck (sorry, bad pun). Multiply that by 10 if you're talking about a peninsula cooktop. Arguing it's OK because you LIKE the odors and grease drifting through your house is silly. If that were really the case, then why do ventilation at all? I know I hate putting on a clean shirt in the morning that smells like last night's garlic.

I have a 64" custom Modern Aire hood, with a remote 1400 cfm Fantech blower, over our 54" Lacanche, which is in addition, recessed into an alcove. I can preheat an All Clad skillet for four minutes on an 18K BTU burner on high, and dump in a piece of foie gras, and you can't smell a thing across the room. That's why you need ventilation. If you are buying a BlueStar, whose claim to fame is primarily blast furnace-like BTU output, then how can you possibly skimp on ventilation? Might as well go with a GE electric if you're never going to fire up the 22K burner for fear of setting off the smoke detector.

To me, doing a BlueStar with lousy ventilation is like buying a $1500 pair of skis, but deciding to save a few bucks by pairing them with a four year old pair of beginner's boots. If you're going to ski hard, you need boots and skis that rock. If you're going to cook hard on a BlueStar, you need ventilation. Otherwise, the only justification for a BlueStar that you'll never crank up full blast is purely for show.

As the OP I have a few things to say. Yes, I asked for help but had I known that by doing so I was putting my kitchen up to a "tribal council" decision, then I wouldn't have. Perhaps I should have worded my inquiry differently, such as "Does anyone have experience with a 36" inch island hood over a 36" range?" I apologize if anyone somehow felt affronted by me not taking your advice after you put in the time and effort to offer me your opinion.

To be clear, I wanted to go with a 42" hood over my 36" BlueStar. My wife and interior designer however, were also concerned about limited storage space given the constraints inherent to the overall floor plan of the house.

I originally posted on here to give me ammunition for my argument for the larger hood. But after reading mojavean's post it got me thinking. I realized that I do the majority of my cooking on two burners plus one for simmering. If I reconfigured the 36" range so that the burners I'm likely to use the most (22k btu) are directly under the middle of the hood, it actually would be BETTER under a 36" hood, than not reconfiguring and having the 22k burners at the front left and right, and thus closer to the edges of a 42" one.

If you want, we could have an argument over fluid mechanics over that.

I did point out how a smaller hood would be sub-optimal to my wife and did read some of the comments to her. However, I know that compromising is a vital part of a healthy relationship. And a compromise to a smaller hood which is arguably equivalent for the majority of the cooking that I will do seems fine to me.

Plus, she is now fully aware of the potential odor and grease issues and I can always refer to this thread in the future should she complain about greasy plates and smelly shirts.

Lastly, in regards to the skiing analogy. I'd argue that the most important piece of ski equipment is not the skis but the boots themselves. That's why boots are so much more customizable. You can't deny that you'd ski better in $1500 boots and beginner skis than the other way around.

To me, the range is the equivalent of the boots. I can cook a pretty good meal on a 36" BlueStar with just rudimentary ventilation. I can't say the same if I had a hot plate and a custom made, fancy hood guaranteed to capture all possible effluent.

Here's an idea, clinsrega. Maybe YOU can tell us what city it would be where the installation of an island hood outlined by the OP is against code, or get aprince, who suddenly seems to have vanished, to pipe up and fill us in on the details.

And as for your stirring post (sorry, bad pun), I would not be surprised with a 1400CFM hood and a 5" overlap on each side that your capture will be better than some other installations, including mine. I seriously doubt your claim that you cannot smell your own cooking, but judging by your description of what you would do to a foie gras, I think that would certainly be a blessing if true.

In any case, if you think I am shy about cranking the big burner up, you would be wrong. But that's okay! Be wrong in peace! My point is that sometimes the layout of our kitchens constrain the optimal solution such that compromise is necessary. Clearly, the OP was in such a bind. He is modifying his setup so that his high btu cooking will occur on the center two burners of his range. That will give him 10 to 12" of effective lateral overlap on both sides of the burners. That's more than you have on the outside burners on the Lacanche.

The OP will have 1000CFM moving through his smaller hood which will result in higher plume velocity than you are getting, so I imagine he and his wife will probably survive okay.

But imagine the coulda-beens. Maybe if aprince hadn't chewed on him so condescendingly, the guy would come back and tell us all how it works himself!

@mojavean: admonition well taken. Tone is a big issue online and mine was probably too "pointed." I understand that reality trumps perfection, so my overly critical tone was unnecessary.

And, as for code, I have never known of or claimed that housing code required any specific level of ventilation. So I'm with you, I don't think aprince's observation will be substantiated.

And yes, you're correct that the OP did take reasonable measures to optimize his existing system. We did the same: the highest BTU burners on our stove are all centered. We have the simmer burners to one side, and the french top to the other, so actually we have probably over 20" clearance to the high heat hobs. It's certainly a smart move.

It should be pointed out again that increased blower cfm rates cannot compensate for inadequate capture area. No matter how high a percentage and how quickly you evacuate the effluent that is captured by the hood, you will still fail to capture all effluent that laterally drifts outside the edges of the hood. There may be a few cm. of inward airflow around the edges of the hood, expanding the capture zone a tiny bit, but basically, if it drifts outside the hood, it's gone, to your cabinet tops or clothes closet eventually.

I think my vehemence is driven by my disappointment with my first attempt at improving ventilation at the lake house using a 36" vent a hood over a 36" cooktop. Epic fail: when I sear on that stove, I actually hold a sheet pain vertically beside the skillet to prevent the fumes from drifting away from the hood. So some of this is not so much for the OP, but more for others contemplating ventilation requirements with an open mind. I can't overemphasize what a huge luxury it is to never worry about odor permeating the dining room and grease on cabinets.

PS: learned to cook foie gras from Michael Tuohy, now chef/owner of Grange restaurant in Sacramento. It's just a few seconds, but it creates a fabulous crust while leaving the interior barely set. Nice if you like that kind of stuff.

I have a 1200cfm 48" hood over a 48" CC with grill/griddle. Even when using the grill I rarely have to go very high on the fan speed. I had 12 lamb tbones right up against the broiler on Sunday. When I opened that door the smoke poured out, with the fan on high there was no problem evacuating the smoke. On Thanksgiving we had several of the 23k burners cranking and the cabinets were cool to the touch and frankly there were complaints that we just didn't have that typical "holiday meal smell" (when the home is filled with the smells of all the glory going on in the kitchen).

Is a larger hood better? YES. Is it required? NO. It's like saying that all homeowners should never buy anything other than a CC or Bluestar etc because lower end ranges just don't do the job. Are they better? Of course, but they are not required for most people.

If you tend to produce a lot of smoke when you cook then you should try to oversize your hood. If in general most meals do not involve billowing smoke then a hood the size of the range will work just fine. As far as depth, I wish I could have gone 27" deep, but as it is I am 1-2" away from the front of my 24" deep hood. Cooking would be a miserable experience if I had a deeper hood.