Hood insert decision: Best, Viking or Wolf

5 years ago

Need to make the hood decision soon on the new house. 60" hood over a big stove -- 1200cfm internal blower. 10" + ductwork up and out is already in. Shocking how poor the manufacturers web sites ..... horrible pictures. I'm not seeing where Wolf makes an inset over 52" inches ... strange. Have to call them.

The Best IQ seems to have a fancy feedback control and motor. Fixed speeds: 3 + boost. The Best seems to have some type of hybrid filters (Baffles and screens maybe)

The Viking looks to be a more conventional design design with the open baffle filters. Variable knob motor control.

Can anyone comment on the specifics? Is the Best really quieter ?

Currently have an older DCS stove and 48 hood with the open baffle design -- 1200 cfm blower. It's loud when you crank it up. I'm assuming the larger hood with more surface area will have slightly less noise ?

They both have 4 LED down lights -- the Viking can also be had with 3 heat lamps

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Comments (4)

kaseki
5 years ago
According to my Wolf Design Guide, admittedly somewhat old, the largest Pro Insert is 58-3/8 inches wide.

For exactly equal aerodynamics baffle assemblies, a larger area seeing the same CFM will have lower velocity at the baffles and hence lower baffle turbulence noise. However, the CFM will not be equal, because the larger area will have lower pressure loss at the lower velocity so the blower flow rate will increase slightly. But wait, there's more. The dominant noise source is normally blower fan blade tip turbulence, so depending on where the blower is located the sound might be closer to equal for the same blower.

If noise is a strong consideration, then an external or in-line blower should be used with a silencer between hood and blower.

But none of this is worth much unless all of the pressure losses coming into the house and going out of the house are addressed, because these will determine what the CFM actually is for the blower that is actually in use.

Any filter assembly using mesh filters, whether tarted up with half baffles below or not, will need to kept rigorously clean to continue to function correctly. Baffles will continue to function at the same pressure loss whether greasy or not.
TAG
Original Author
5 years ago
Kaseki. That's sort of why I had planed on the Best insert. Made by Broan -- they should know something about fan blades and motors. The Best web site touts the motors and blade design on the IQ setup -- electronic motor control for the DC motors. My DCS has a Broan motor connected to twin squarell cage blowers. I'm wondering who makes the Wolf and Viking blowers? The Viking site shows one image of the 1200 motors that looks just like my 20 year old DCS unit and another picture looks like the two motor design of the new Best w/o the DC motor control.

It's hard to tell what kind of baffles the Best hood insert has.
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kaseki
5 years ago
At the time that I bought my Wolf hood (12 years ago) after getting fan curves from Wolf, the potentially relevant blowers were made for Wolf by Broan/NuTone. What I didn't try to find out, expecting I wouldn't succeed, was whether or not Wolf imposed particular requirements on Broan/NuTone that would result in a slightly different/more reliable/better whatever blower.

My hood was actually made for Wolf by Independent, but consequent comments here reported that Wolf took their hood fabrication in-house.
coray
5 years ago
Vent-a-Hood hoods are excellent! We just installed our second one in the current house; previous owners went cheap, had one with the little mesh filters, we had old, rancid oil dripping onto the range constantly, and no way to get into the hood insert, disassemble and clean it. The Magic Lung has catch basins that unhook easily.....just wash them out, re-hook, done! We had one in the last house and loved it...they work super well, have great light and controls, and they’re not even very noisy. We got a 42”, 900 cfm (3 blowers) insert for ca. $2500, incl. some accessories we needed and the new 10” vent pieces.