Yes. A standard base cabinet carcass height is 34.5"...but it is sometimes nominally referred to as 36" to indicate total ht. including the standard 1.5 thickness of countertop material.

Yes...I think 34.5" for cabinets and 1.5" for the counter material is the assumption but not completely sure on that. Our final height was just shy of 36" because we have 3 cm counters.

Hah! Thank you! My GC tried to tell me the other day that the cabinets were 36" high and the counter brought it up to 37.5". I was so taken aback and thought, "How could I possibly be wrong about that after all the obsessive research I've done???"

Maybe he just delights in telling me I'm wrong because he doesn't like know-it-all bossy clients.

I see warning signs with the GC.

Ooooh!!! I have those for my island!!! No. Wait. 3 cm stone... What's 38" - 3 cm = ?

(Hee.)

I agree. I chose to have 36.5" perimeter, and 38" island. Standard, of course, being as you thought. I agree that it's a warning sign about the GC, unless he was just having a brain cramp.

yeah, I agree that's kind of weird. It's not a dumb question from you, the homeowner, but it shouldn't be an issue for the GC. Standard practice is standard practice.

Does he seem to be thinking you're a know-it-all bossy client? Is he having a problem with your 'research'? Uh-oh....

test him on a few other things...lol!

The issue came up when we were discussing the hood (which I need to order this week!). At first he had told me that code required that the hood be between 36" and 42" above the cooktop. DH looked into it and could find only a requirement about venting, um, something I can't remember that doesn't apply to us. Sorry, still on first cup of coffee. Then when GC installed the 10" high soffit I asked him how we were going to meet code with an 18" hood sitting on a 10" soffit dropped from a 96" ceiling. So he told me I was measuring wrong and that I had to measure from the floor up, and that's how the whole discussion got started. So he measured the height of my Lacanche, found it was 35" and told me he didn't know if it would pass code, being 2.5" below the countertops. *eye roll*

Fire inspector should be in his office tomorrow, so I will call then and have a little chat with him.

Agree with everyone else about the standard height and the warning signs from GC. Are you sure you aren't just stating what you want in a normal way, but he is perceiving you as know-it-all and bossy because you knew something he didn't?

Also, I think the general recommended height for hood placement is 30-34" from stovetop. You can go higher, I plan to do 36", but it may not work as efficiently. The hood company may state something in their specifications about the height they recommend. I would think 42" may not allow the hood to do its job properly.

Right, and the whole ventilation thing is very confusing to me anyway. Should you go by the hood maker's recs or the range maker's recs? The formula seems to be something like:

(total BTUs/width of cooktop)*duct length*number of turns + cos(angles of turn)
____________________________________________________
(total CFMs of hood - remaining kitchen budget)

So rather than order the hood and hope for the best, I'm going to wait until I've talked to the fire inspector to see exactly what code requires.

Code has to do with distances to flammable substances and a hood is not a flammable substance (one would hope). International Building code which should supercede local code (although there are turf wars, and I would not want to annoy a local inspector) doesn't deal with specific range hood / height requirements. External ventilation isn't even a requirement. Once in place however, things such as make-up air do come back into play because of the possibility of drawing exhaust from HVAC into the house rather than allowing to travel passively out its own duct and things like that.

Thanks, palimpsest--you're enormously helpful as always! So it sounds like this is not even the fire inspector's provenance, but plumbing instead, since it's HVAC? Or building? GAH.

Our inspector went by the range requirements (distance from top of grate to combustible material (for us - wood mantel surround on vent)). Our Blue Star requires 36". This also meant no upper cabs right next to the range. Our hood was 6" wider so it wasn't a problem. Our inspector measured the distances. The next town measures too. My contractor had to move a hood up because it didn't meet spec.

I don't think you could go wrong by following the range and range hood requirements, as determined by the manufacturer's specs. These may actually be slightly different, especially in terms of what each thinks is ideal, but they usually each have a "range" of acceptable dimension.

Thanks, bostonpam, that's good to know. I will consult the specs again for Lacanche.

palimpsest, I'm sure you're right, and there should be some overlap of acceptability. The GC just has me so spooked about this, and I don't think I can return a custom hood from MA and then live another 4-6 weeks without a hood while they make another. Something to discuss with them before ordering, I guess.

I feel like KitchenRemodel Barbie: "Ventilation is tough!"