A reasonable suggestion but we have discussed and would not consider that, for many reasons. It would be a terrible layout. We love our layout with the dual sinks and dual work triangles, and don't want to close up the pass-through, or move the sink to the island.

I at least want to get my hood questions answered before considering alternate layouts.

We bought this one and painted it the color of our walls. https://www.ajmadison.com/cgi-bin/ajmadison/KBITT36.html. I totally obsessed over ventilation. I couldn’t do a down draft and had nightmares about a giant silver chimney hanging down from the ceiling. We rearranged our layout so we could have a double oven and induction cooktop (huge priority for us). I am very pleased with how it turned out. I have only used the fan at its lowest setting and it’s worked great. But I don’t fry a lot of things. It’s louder than I would like, but it’s something I can live with.

I wok cook as well, on a 36” gas range, American Range ARROB-36. It has 123K BTU total burners. Sometimes we have them all going and the hot oil vaporizing off the wok is doing the fireball thing.

With the old microwave hood and 4” duct, everything was a greasy mess and cooking odor was through out the house. Icky.

I installed a 48” CaptiveAire commercial hood with sideblast blower and 10x10 duct for 1000 cfm. Now literally nothing can cause effluent, odors, smoke, to escape the hood.

Seriously, I could cook while smoking a cigarette and you wouldn’t smell it in the kitchen. I don’t but you get the idea.

I do roast coffee in a drum machine, indoors, placing the machine on the range under the hood. Last week I went way too dark, smoke was pouring out of the roaster in a quantity that suggested a possible roaster fire. I thought ”uh oh” and switched the blower to full. No problem. And no fire.

If you are a serious wok’er, and especially with your wife’s situation, and twice-especially with your cooktop being on an island, I think you will need a commercial island hood or equivalent. See here

https://www.captiveaire.com/catalog/list.asp?cattypeid=70

That hood says lower edge can be 33” to 48” above the cooking surface. I hung my hood so that I actually stand under it, I’m 6’ in sneakers.

There might be more attractive residential models, but they are still going to be a big hulking hood smack in the middle of your kitchen. You might be able to wrap it in wood panels, maybe integrate some attractive lighting, to disguise it a little. Or just lean into it. You’re a serious cook. You should have the tools.

Your architect’s flush mounted ceiling panel will not work. At all. You need not just cfm but also capture volume.

@kaseki will hopefully see this and explain how to figure out the needed area and cfm. If he doesn’t I can try to find the Greenheck guide.

Remote blower is fine, just size blower and ducts and duct run correctly. I don’t think noise matters, because you’re only going to run it on high when you’re really flaming away, so not a long time, and the kitchen is not exactly going to be an oasis of serenity then anyway. On low, a good blower should be quiet enough.

Unless, like me, you get a controller and fan that “hums” - not all commercial up/sideblast fans can run quietly at low rpm, because the users don’t care, but others can, and I just bought the wrong one. Then again, the hum is outside my house so if it doesn’t bother me much.

I am pretty sure you want baffles, for the grease collection.

With your cooking, I strongly suggest you look at other options for your layout. Are you sure you cannot get a better layout with a more functional setup? You might try asking for help here -- you'd be surprised the ideas some people have come up with here! It helps that people here do not have pre-conceived notions going in as well as being able to look at the Kitchen objectively.

The fact is, human beings are very adaptable. We can adapt to anything - good or bad! We adapt so well that we tell ourselves it's fine the way it is and we often no longer "see" the issues we've adapted to. But, what if it could be better? If you ask just about anyone here who took our advice and changed their layout to make it better, they will tell you they never realized it could be so much better and wondered how they had lived with the issues for so long! (The answer is back to the adaptability of human beings!)

Human beings are resistant to change. Even when something can be made better, we resist change. We like (or are comfortable with) what we know and we have a hard time seeing other ways to do things - even if they would be so much better! And, as I mentioned before, we've adapted to what we have - both the good and the bad.

If you're going to spend the $$$ to renovate, don't create a "make do" Kitchen or simply repeat the issues/inefficiencies of previous Kitchen(s) you've had (or even just seen). Why not at least try for something better?

You may end up with you have in the end, but if you're willing/open to considering other layouts, you may be pleasantly surprised.

Terse due to the hour. Searching on "kaseki" and "hood" will yield a vast number of comments here that may be relevant, as well as links to references.

Q1: The CFM determinate is velocity at the baffles when considering residential hoods with typically low reservoir volume like Wolf, ModernAire, etc. Aim for an actual 90 CFM per square foot of hood entry aperture, which is equivalent to 90 ft/min. Blower will need to be rated at about 1.5 times this.

Q2: Big hanging hood R us. See image. Need to overlap on all sides by 3 to 6 inches. I use Wolf's largest Pro Island hood with a chimney cover to put my hood at 34.5 inches above the cooktop under an 8-ft ceiling. You can use the next smaller size. I use a 1500 CFM external down-roof blower. You can go modestly smaller.

Ovens are always a problem. Few are willing to mount another hood or eyebrow hood over an oven stack. I have a vent at the ceiling for this purpose with a 600 CFM (rated) roof blower, but it cannot adequately capture rising oven plumes from a just opened door. Obviously, there is some size and velocity capture area that would work, but then one has to address cost, and how it is cleaned.

Q3: If you mount in commercial style at 48 inches above the cooktop, you will be best supported by a commercial sized hood aperture. Plumes expand. 42 inches may be acceptable for the Pro Island hood, but will need higher flow rate so the effective hood aperture grows a bit due to flow at the edges.

Q4: I use an inline Fantech LD-10 silencer in the attic. A silencer is essential to remove blade tip turbulence noise, which is otherwise only modestly attenuated by duct length to the blower. My noise is mainly baffle hiss at approximately 100 ft/min actual measured flow. Some blower unbalance rumble can also be heard. One can easily talk across the hood space, but an open plan living room TV's volume might need to be increased. Note 10-inch ducting is the smallest one can properly use. Duct velocity should be between 1000 ft/min and 2000 ft/min to balance grease impact and condensation accumulation. Best to warm the duct when it is cold by a few minutes of operation.

To first order, the location of the blower can be anywhere in the loop from cooktop to outside and back to cooktop and achieve the same CFM as the loop pressure loss is the same. Localized effects such as bends, fan blade design, etc., can have minor effect. Leaks can be relevant. MUA must have low enough pressure loss (or have a blower of its own) for the hood system blower to meet flow requirements. Also house pressure needs to stay close to the external pressure.

Q5: Mesh filters are hard to clean, are restrictive when greasy, and are likely too high a pressure loss even when clean for the flow velocity you need to assure containment when wok-cooking. Large, quality hoods will have baffles. Commercial hoods can have filters containing baffles plus other kinds of filtering when there are specific reasons related to particulate size spectrum to include them. Note real baffle assemblies provide a double reversal of flow direction.

Click to enlarge.

The almost never seen in Wolf's literature guts view. OEM halogens replaced with LEDs. Later LEDs are small enough to hide. Rails are optional. Red handling post covers are de rigueur.

Folks, I really appreciate the suggestions to revisit the layout and I am not dismissing them out of hand. I have discussed with the architect and will bring it up again. But you can't see what's on the other side of the wall. Giving up the pass-through would be a problem. Or giving up the cabinet space would be a problem. And this layout is a dream to work and live in.

But thank you. What I've gathered so far is that (A) we just need a big-ass hood regardless of where the cooktop is, and (B) even that won't help a lot with bursts of oven smoke.

Would it be a foolish waste to put a hood over the cooktop AND a flush mount above the oven?

Flush mounts are useless and do not provide adequate capture space for a burning candle. So are most, but not all, island hoods. They lack capture area, adequate CFM for the cooking, and all will require a MUA system. That layout would drive me crazy to cook in. There's no room on the island for any adequate prep, so all the prep takes place on the perimeter. I'd much rather swap the prep sink and the cooktop, so the prep would take place on the island. And a stool could be at the end there, for the spouse to sit and be social.

You're re-doing the kitchen, so you can make "big changes". Since you seem to want a hood for both the cooktop AND the oven, I'd say consider a range instead of separate items. One hood will service both. Considerations:

- If you're keeping the cooktop /oven in the island, go with a slide-in model, which will be "flat" and will "look right".

- If you want to keep duplicate ovens, go with one of those full oven + skinny top oven /all in the size of one range. This'll also give you more counterspace.

Miele has two new 36" induction ranges that will be made in their new US plant. Info should be released soon. One version will have a water hookup for steam, although not as comprehensive as a Combi oven.

We just updated as well. We put in an induction cooktop (which we love after an adjustment from gas) and the Miele Combi. With a 36” cooktop, we needed a 42” vent and makeup air per code. Not sure what your code options are but I would recommend going with a hood that will really clear the air. Look for the highest blend of strong and silent would be my advice. John’s “blend it in” option is a good recommendation if you are not changing the layout. Kaseki has some great points to consider. FWIW, sounds like you want more of a refresh than a remodel? You have room to make some layout changes that you might also fall in love with.

Venting the wall ovens is tricky. If you broil a lot, and produce a lot of smoke/grease, and the oven door is being opened to move, flip, check the food, then I can certainly see that an oven hood would be desirable.

The problem is that there aren’t many.

There are “eyebrow” hoods specifically for commercial ovens, mounted right over the oven, but I don’t know anything about them. They look like they would protrude into the aisle at face-smacking level.

You could put a wall mount hood where the upper cabinet is, above the ovens, mounted high enough that it isn’t in the way of someone walking there. It would have to be pretty much at the ceiling. Raise the ovens as much as ergonomically possible to put them closer to that hood.

I think a flush ceiling vent above the ovens would have the same problem as for the cooktop - no capture volume. Effluent coming out of the oven will be affected by the big-ass island hood on full blast, probably not enough to cross the aisle and get captured in the island hood, but maybe enough to make a flush ceiling vent even less effective. Also, wouldn’t the cabinet above the ovens get greasy?

Or move the ovens to the island so they are vented by the range hood. But low ovens are really inconvenient for watching as you broil.

A weird idea - which I might actually consider but I don’t care about aesthetics and have a tolerant spouse - is to suspend a small salamander under the island hood. BlueStar (do they still exist?) used to make a residential salamander. You’d need some custom metal fabrication. A commercial hood is plenty strong enough to support the weight, I don’t know about a residential hood.

I truly appreciate every comment and suggestion. I am meeting my architect today at an appliance dealer and will be discussing the "lean into it" idea (i.e., going with an oversized or even a custom hood and embellishing it artistically).

DUMB QUESTION: How do I go about narrowing down hood options that can work with a powerful remote blower. For example, if I go to build.com and filter island hoods by 42+" with baffle filters and 1,200+ CFM, I get only 3 results. I assume with a remote blower my options should expand considerably.

Cool idea about the salamander. I appreciate the creativity. I don't know if it's possible but I'll look into it.

For all the reasons you stated, the hood-above-the-oven idea seems like a fool's errand.

I'm not sure it's practical but I will also consider the idea of moving an oven under the cooktop. I'm thinking about possibly moving to a steam oven/regular oven combo, which would mean a lot of broiling/roasting is more likely to be in the lower oven.

The wall-mounted hood might look like this, viewed from the side, with the boxes being the wall ovens. If the bottom of the hood is at 7 feet, the upper part of the upper oven opening could probably be within 30" of it, and thus the capture should be fine. It would be a visual obstruction but not a physical one.

With some creativity, you could also take a hood insert, turn it 90 degrees, and install it flush in the cabinet right above the oven. Probably a little less effective but with enough cfm and remembering to turn it on full blast before opening the oven door, should work fine because the air inflow is just inches from the upper part of the upper oven opening and only about 24" (?) from the upper part of the lower oven opening.

If the underside of the wall-mounted hood insert is unattractive, you can buy or have fabricated a perforated or slotted panel. Or a hinged solid panel that swings out to be an overhanging hood when you need it, and swings back flush with the cabinet when you don't. A sheet metal fabricator can make that. They can make anything. I designed my stainless steel sinks and had them custom made by a local fabricator, it cost not more than two high end production sinks. Depends on your appetite for custom, bespoke work.

Finally, just to leave no idea unthunk, there are electric countertop salamanders. that you could set on the island under the hood. They are quite bulky/commercial looking, require 220v, and even though they are called salamanders it is possible that they are more cheese melters. Certainly adequate for broiling fish, but not sure about broiling a steak.

Here is a beautiful example of a salamander under the hood…

Summit Home Renovation · More Info

Oooooo - I would so love a salamander. I hate broiling with my range oven - squatting on haunches to watch the broiling progress is uncomfortable, and when you momentarily stand up to give your knees some relief, the meat or fish see that and instantly burn up. It is like the opposite of a watched kettle.

Me too!

John's protruding secondary hood over the ovens can work so long as the depth of the hood allows enough reservoir (below baffles) volume to match the volume of effluent that opening the oven door will throw at the hood. This might require a commercial style hood partly penetrating into the overhead. The good news is that such a hood only has to flow the average CFM not the peak CFM of the door opening. Reaching the baffles so high up for cleaning may be a challenge.

By commercial and large reservoir, @opaone's hood provides an illustration.

My longish (66-in) island hood covers a Cooktek induction wok plus a 36-inch Frigidaire Gallery induction cooktop. One could consider putting a salamander in the wok position. Or have a second hood over a more distant countertop supported salamander.

My Wolf Pro Island hood mounting via the chimney cover is sufficiently strong to support the weight of a salamander, (given fasteners used and beams attached to above), but I think it would be a bit much, site-line wise.

Wolf Design Guide: https://www.subzero-wolf.com/trade-resources/-/media/files/united-states/product-downloads/sub-zero-wolf/design-guides/wolf-design-guide.pdf. See page 148.

That article is amazing. I'm going oversized.

" I'm going oversized. "

Exciting! Say more?

"Exciting! Say more?"

Architect joined me at an appliance dealer who was pretty knowledgeable and quick to admit that most of what he sells is ineffective. So he helped me convince the architect that a big blower and a wider, deeper capture area, mounted lower, was the only solution.

He also (through questioning) figured out that my existing 1000cfm remote blower had never been ducted properly and probably never came close to moving air like it was supposed to.

So we agreed to plan for a deep 48" wide hood with baffle filters and a remote or inline attic 1500cfm blower with 10" ducts mounted possibly a little higher than 36" above the cooktop.

As to which one, I challenged the architect to think creatively. The guy was recommending Best and we were given specs for the Best CP5 series insert hood (if we wanted to do something custom), and the straight stainless version (I believe it's the WPP1).

This was before I read that article. Sounds like there are others we should consider over Best. I wish I could see these in person -- especially something like the CaptiveAire.

This really depends of your preference and options! I personally hate exhaust hood over the kitchen island! In that option I would go with hidden in countertop as in your picture! And as extra, it works as protection wall, for oils not to fly on rest of the countertop or even floor!

Miss Lilly I also hate exhaust hoods over islands, but I've had the downdraft for 30 years and it was very ineffective (it also broke mechanically multiple times). Now thanks to all the fine people here I at least better understand why.

CaptiveAire is just one of various commercial kitchen and industrial ventilation brands. They all look pretty similar - big stainless steel box with sloped baffles. If you wrap your island hood in panels, like opaone did, all you’ll really see is the interior and baffles.

Mine is a ”low proximity” hood, meant for low ceiling applications. These have the front edge raised up. My ceilings are not particularly low but I wanted to hang the hood as low as possible while still being able to stand under the front edge which is about 6’ 1” above the floor.

There might be a CaptiveAire dealer around you, check website. The one I went to was quite helpful, calculated cfms for me. Website has Revit (CAD) models of the different models, which your architect may find handy.

Commercial hoods can be quite tall (18-24”). If your ceiling is low that could be a problem. In that case you might have to use a high end “professional-type” residential brand like the one you mentioned. I’m pretty sure those cost substantially more than a commercial hood. A 48" commercial hood should be in the $1,500-2,200 range for the hood only.

Please keep us updated. Love to see what you end up with.

PROMISED UPDATE!!

We had some delays in planning but are finalizing the project now and the one appliance that's still baffling me a bit is the island hood.

We're definitely doing a remote blower with all that entails.

We've decide we're NOT wrapping anything in wood. Too much wood. We're going to look at the hood. With that in mind, I've considered:

Commercial: I spoke to CaptiveAire and the need for a fire suppression system with extra permitting may kill that idea. Plus the "big box" design is not winning anybody over.

Residential "pro style" hoods: What's bugging me about these is that the knobs and lights are usually embedded across a section of stainless steel in the front of the unit, which feels to me like it literally steals from the capture area. Am I overthinking this?

Proline makes range hoods that seem to better maximize the capture area but reviews suggest that they are a terrible company that can't even reliably deliver product.

Wolf pro island hood looks great. Love the controls and I trust the brand (the other appliances are Wolf) and there are plenty of dealers and excellent service. I just worry that the capture area is reduced by the lights and controls across the front.

Vent-a-Hood has a good reputation and lights on the side instead of the front. I didn't realize until now that I could do a remote blower with Vent-a-Hood and they replace their "magic lung" with baffles. I just don't know where I could see this before committing to buying it. Any thoughts on this option?

Zephyr seems to have the same issue as Wolf and they don't sell remote blowers.

Thermador and Elica and Best have some substantial looking models that look great butseem like the smallest capture area of all -- very big light banks both front and back.

Z-Line also has the line of lights on both sides and I've read that their quality is crappy.

I my fixation on the reduced size of the capture area reasonable or just overthinking?

Would you 1) buy a Vent-a-Hood without seeing the baffles, 2) stop worrying and get the matching Wolf, 3) recommend yet a different brand I've overlooked, or 4) just go with the best value because any of them will be fine?

I stopped worrying and bought my Wolf because I didn't have time to develop a optimized hood system. It works well enough. If I were to do anything over, I would have disassembled the roof blower and had the rotating mass balanced.

The Wolf light/controls on my Pro Island hood require a hood entry aperture edge thickness of 4.5 inches, whereas the other three edges are 1.5 inches.

Air will flow horizontally across the edges, but not as fast as directly under the baffles. If the geometry of the cooking process causes the plume components that would impact the edge to be lower velocity than directly upward -- the usual case --. then more-or-less full capture may occur over the outer-dimension hood area. For non island hoods, the wall effect and possible cabinet effects make the flow field somewhat tilted, much like John's CaptiveAire cut-out. In such a case the effective entry aperture can be a bit larger than the horizontal hood sectional area.

With respect to fire suppression, I'm not aware of any such requirement for residential hoods, even if built from commercial hood parts. Nor are welded ducts, access ports, or yearly inspections. They would be a good idea if grease production were commercial rate. I think few home owners would be generating this much grease. Above the baffles, the thin film of grease that results from imperfect filtering will generally harden into a varnish. The rest will be expelled into the neighborhood, either upward or along the roof slope. Any grease that is deposited on the roof should disassociate due to solar UV.

If you are set on going with the baffle filters I would look mainly at the canopy style/design and pick one that you like and fits your kitchen design. With a remote blower system they are all basically the same internal parts so the only thing that makes it different is the wrapping. I would spend time looking at the lighting options that the hood will have. Island hoods are tough to get good efficient lighting. I would stay away from Vent-A-Hood and the baffle filters. I do know they offer them but they end up being much higher priced that the standard magic lung hood options and they only have 4 lights, 2 on each end so if you have a wider, oversized hood you could end up a little shy of light in the middle of the range where you do most of your cooking. There are many hood manufacturers that offer just the hoods with the baffle filters so I would look and if you find one that catches your eye get some pricing and see where it takes you.

@kaseki your comments always make my head spin but they are thoughtful and helpful.

@regbob I haven't priced out V-a-H but that's good to know. I also know somebody with one and will inquire regarding the lighting.

The Island lighting question is definitely one reason I liked the commercial option with lights up in the middle of the hood. I wish there were residential brands that did this!

Lighting: W.r.t. my island hood, the Wolf has three lamps angled toward the front-back center of the cooking area. The originals were halogen, and provided a fairly even illumination over the cooking area. They were too hot to stand under, so I replaced them with some LED array flood lamps. These were just a bit too narrow beamed for uniformity, and were long enough to stick out a bit. Later I replaced these with different, shorter LED array flood lights that provide a more uniform illumination. Unavoidably due to the fixture placement, these yield slightly lower illumination in the zone opposite the control area. (Expand my photo towards the beginning of this thread.) But the dip is completely tolerable for me. I haven't measured it. I don't know the layout of the less wide Pro Island hoods to comment on their likely uniformity behavior.

FYI it appears that Wolf doesn't even make a 48" island hood (just 42" or 54"). Bummer.

The 42 is for 36-inch cooktops; the 54 is for 48-inch cooktops. I don't think they make a 42 inch cooktop or range, although I didn't check the Wolf Design Guide thoroughly.

My goodness. Now that I really know what I want, I'm really striking out! I've learned that I have a rather lethal combination:

Island cooktop + low ceiling + pro-style capture area = impossible to find unless I'm willing to mount the hood really low (that's the one thing I'm not willing to do, because of course, it's in the middle of the room).

Yeah I hadn't mentioned this -- we have 8' ceilings and tall people in the house.

I'm trying to figure out where to compromise.

To recap:

I'll have a 36" induction cooktop in the middle of an island, on a 38" high countertop, with a 96" ceiling.

Because I insist on mounting the hood above my head, and because it's an open island environment, I decided to forego the recommended 42" size and go wide with a 48" long hood.

I'm also very willing to go overboard on CFM (1200 or 1500), with a remote blower, because it's quieter, and because I can always run it on low, but I can't add CFM after the fact.

And I want a pro-style hood with a real capture area (most of which seems to have "canopies" in the range of around 14"-16" high).

So I'm going overboard on all of the above, partially to make up for mounting the hood about 38" above the counter.

The problem: That's just 20" below the ceiling. As I look at residential pro-style hoods, almost anything with a decent capture area height has a minimum height of around 30 inches.

I've looked at Modernaire, Victory, Wolf, Thermador, Zline, Zephyr, Best, Elica, Vent-a-Hood, Trade Wind, Bluestar, Victory, ProLine, and all the usual appliance brands, plus commercial hoods.

Proline has a 48" x 33.75" Pro V Island hood with an 18" high canopy, an inline 1300CFM blower and a custom cut option for the chimney. It's even got the lights in the middle like a commercial hood. I want to love it, but man... reviews suggest that Proline's delivery and after-sale support can be absolutely horrible (they've also been accused of bribing customers for positive reviews).

Victory is another obscure hood company, based in Canada, with a nice size 48"x28"model with a 15" high hood and a remote blower option. I am waiting to hear back from them with whether they do custom cut chimneys. A little concerned about quality but I'm not finding a lot of options.

Modern Aire has a 48"x27" model with a 16" high canopy and a chimney that's only 12"x12" which should be narrow enough to maybe fit up through the attic joists, but big dual light bars reduce the capture area to a very narrow 46"x14". What were they thinking?

That's it. My other options are:

• A commercial hood (really don't want that in the middle of my kitchen)
• A hood liner like the Prestige High-Capacity insert (don't want a custom wood surround over my island -- too much wood)
• A more contemporary, shallow style hood with only a few inches of capture area.
• Maybe start looking at 42" hoods (there are a lot more options in that size)

It has been my impression that ModernAire will build any hood you can define, particularly when the blower is remote.

I suspect this is also true for Handcrafted Metal: https://www.handcraftedmetal.com/

My hood (pictured earlier in this thread) is mounted to a nominal 8-ft ceiling over a nominal 36-inch counter height. Actual counter clearance is 34.5 inches. Height of the Wolf Pro Island hood is only 18 inches! But as may be seen for my case, there is a 6-inch chimney in use. Without the chimney, under an actual 8-ft ceiling the hood base would be 6ft 6in above the floor. If that is lower than head height, then body bending factors should be taken into account, along with the oft pointed out here comments about one quickly learning to duck.

Another thing one can do is block out an area of the ceiling joists and have hood components extend into the attic. This could be combined with using a commercial hood or a custom hood.

Don't forget the need for a make-up air plan. It should precede any hood purchase.

Last, I recommend that one should internalize a well-known military procurement maxim: "An affordable 90% solution beats an unaffordable 100% solution."

Amen.

FWIW I have looked at your Wolf photo several times with envy. Unfortunately Wolf doesn't make a 48". They make a 42" and a 54", and my island is only 69" (plus overhang) so 54" feels like too much.

(I wonder what that would look like with no chimney at all? It would be 40" above my cooktop.)

PS Good to know about Modern Aire, but check this out: I asked about the capture area dimensions of their 48" pro style hood and they sent me this diagram. The light bars takes up more than half of the capture area!

UPDATE -- Found a photo:

So am I thinking about this correctly that a 42" Wolf (roughly a 39x28 opening) might be better than this "larger" Modernaire (46x14 opening)?

Might be. Even if I knew the details of those bars w.r.t. the edges, it would be guesswork to know just what capture performance was possible at the bar areas. One has to imagine the cooking plume to be a light source with emanating light rays. These rays, however, can bend in the local wind. So the question is, for the hottest plume cooking, do rays that hit the bars reflect outward or are the rays pulled to into the hood baffle area.

What direction will local drafts tend to push the plume cone? A wider hood might be better in some circumstances. But you still have front-to-back needs that grow with hood height. The Pro Island hood is intended for a 36-inch maximum separation with the pans.

I think the Wolf appears to be more optimal in regard to the bar issue, but I also believe that ModernAire knows what they are doing. That doesn't ensure a successful design, however, because cost and appearance are factors in design.

You can use the Wolf with the 6-inch chimney by mounting the chimney partly into the attic and mudding the ceiling up to the chimney. Note the Pro Island hood with chimney is mounted by first bolting (lag screwing) the chimney to its support -- joists or cripples or metal structure, etc, then bolting the hood to the the chimney. You will need a lift of some short, or pulley system into the attic to place the hood into position for bolting.

Try to picture the 10-inch duct required, it will be more massive than one might think at first thought. The duct will need room to get to a desirable roof penetration area, and preferably do so with a straight section that you can put a Fantech LD10 silencer into.

I'm coming around to getting the Wolf 42" Pro Island Hood. I will confirm this week, but the overall capture area and containment volume appear to be bigger than most 48" hoods (the only 48" hoods I found that might beat it on those factors are Proline and Victory -- two direct-to-consumer brands without a ton of track record for quality control and customer service).

So if I'm going with the 42" Wolf, here are a few new questions:

1. Is a duct silencer still valuable if I have an outdoor-mounted remote blower?
2. Do I have to use the Wolf brand remote blower to get all of the control functions?
3. If there's no particular reason to buy the matching Wolf brand, what brands are recommended for remote blower, duct silencer, makeup air?
4. I have an old but still humming 1000 CFM Dacor REMP3 remote blower on the side of my house (for the downdraft vent that we are pulling out). Is it a crazy idea (or even possible) to move that to the roof and repurpose it instead of buying a new remote blower?

I can only write to my Wolf (made by Independent ca. 2008) hood. It uses a diac/triac based continuous motor control. This type of control works well on blower induction motors with a single untapped winding, such as Broan/NuTone make (made). This function today may have been co-opted by integrated circuit techniques, some of which interrupt whole phase cycles rather than just part of the phase waveform, but both can work.

At the time of my purchase, Wolf obtained their blowers from Broan/Nutone. To address compatibility, you would have to know what the design of the Dacor blower motor is, and if simple induction, you should get a motor control from an electrical distributor or hardware store that is suitable for the motor's current draw and bench test it. (The type of control I'm referring to looks like a rotary light dimmer for fitting in an electrical box, but starts at full power and then reduces it.) You would also have to call Wolf (they answer the phone) and speak to someone about their present motor control's design, and its compatibility with whatever parameters you can glean from the Dacor, usually found on a motor plate.

A Fantech silencer is recommended mounted in the hood-to-roof duct. Note that it will be 4 inches larger in diameter than the duct size. It will reduce the duct air transmitted blade tip turbulence noise, and roof side duct turbulence noise. Vibrations transmitted by the duct structure rather than the air in the duct can be attenuated using stick-on pads used in the automotive field for doors and floors. Renovation is only $$$. Baffle hiss cannot be attenuated, but should be modest.

Make-up air is a whole system to itself, entangled in the existing house architecture, and rather than address it at the moment, please search and review MUA threads on this forum and in the HVAC forum. Examples:

https://www.houzz.com/discussions/5888450/seeking-muas-advice#28657635

https://www.houzz.com/discussions/6078111/cost-to-add-a-make-up-air-system-for-kitchen#n=65

and even on the first page today:

https://www.houzz.com/discussions/6503214/over-the-range-microwave-vent#n=31

There are many other Appliance Forum messages, generally in threads that didn't start as MUA threads. An Internet search engine, functionally looking for kaseki AND MUA AND site:houzz.com, should provide a summer's worth of reading.

When you have read enough examples and have a feel for the questions pertinent to your situation, we can get specific.

OK @kaseki -- more to study! I'll get on that.

Regarding the hood, one more thing: I hadn't seriously considered Vent-a-Hood, partially due to the article shared above. Now the Wolf 42" system with duct cover, remote blower, etc. is coming in at more than $6K and a dealer I'm working with has pointed out the VAH has a 48" with a capture area that's pretty huge.

Here's what the Vent-a-Hood rep said: "Even with a remote blower, they have the traditional baffle filters and are often not as quiet as the Magic Lung. Because of how those filters are installed, you lose quite a bit of capture area as we are limited by the width of the hood as to how many filters can be installed. With the Magic Lung, capture area is the entire bottom of the hood. Here is a quick drawing of what it looks like from the underside/ bottom view:

What are your thought on the magic lung? Is it BS? Is it harder to clean?

Comparing the two options:

Wolf 42" Pro Island with remote blower

Hood exterior dimensions: 42W x 34D x 18H

My best estimate of capture area dimensions: 39W x 28D

Lights: 4 LEDs across the front

Filters: Baffle

Blower: Remote

Vent-a-Hood SEPITH18

Exterior dimensions: 48W x 30D x 18H

My best estimate of capture area dimensions: 45W x 24D

Lights: 2 LEDs recessed on each side

Filters: None

Blower: Magic Lung

I haven't owned a VaH product. A store salesmen touting one back in 2007 convinced me to study kitchen ventilation for my own renovation. In my view: "Because of how those filters are installed, you lose quite a bit of capture area as we are limited by the width of the hood as to how many filters can be installed." is specious.

From @clinresga on this forum are these comment threads:

https://www.houzz.com/discussions/2324336/vent-hoods-and-noise-the-real-scoop-on-vah

https://www.houzz.com/discussions/6417748/hood-depth-question#n=10

Magic can be an entertaining subject, as demonstrated by the widespread popularity of Japanese animation. However, it is a poor basis for kitchen ventilation design.

For fairness, one needs to determine the actual achieved CFM of the two candidate systems taking into account the hood blowers' different fan curves and all the pressure losses vs. CFM in the hood and MUA systems. If equal actual CFM (or equal capture and containment of worst case cooking plumes) is achieved by motor power adjustment, then I have no doubt that a VaH Magic Lung® will be louder than a Wolf with remote blower and a silencer in the duct path.

VAH hoods are loud, not very effective, and a PITA to clean. But they've got a great marketing dept. I've owned 2. Never again. There are much better options.

Thanks again everybody. I'm down to the final decision, which is just to confirm the size of the remote blower to go with the Wolf Pro Island Hood and Fantech MUAS.

I'm willing to go overboard on the blower, because as we've discussed, if it's too much, I can always run it on LOW.

But people keep telling me that 1500cfm is kind of crazy, and I called Wolf and a very nice guy there looked up some static pressure charts to confirm a suspicion that I had -- that the LOW setting with a powerful 1200-1500 CFM blower will be much higher air flow than the LOW setting for a more modest 600-900 CFM blower. He actually sent me some charts.

To those of you who have remote high-CFM blowers, do you notice this? Is the low low enough?

Low is low enough. Note that a minimum air velocity through the baffles is needed to centrifugally extract the grease and moisture from the cooking plume.

I actually measured mine and I think the result is in this thread: https://www.houzz.com/discussions/6040827/range-hood-noise-project. Let me know if I need to search for it.

That noted, my hood is Wolf's largest Pro Island hood, and it covers a 36-inch cooktop and a Cooktek wok hob. You likely only need the 900 CFM blower. Also, I think the Fantech MUA doesn't go to 1500 CFM.

Be sure that at the actual achieved maximum speed flow rate, the air velocity in the duct is not over 2000 ft/min

Update: Definitely getting the Wolf Pro Island Hood and the 900cfm remote blower that marries well to the FanTech MUAS (which, as you suggested, has a maximum rate of 1,100cfm).

Where I'm striking out right now is in finding a contractor who has any experience with these systems. It's remarkable. They've all installed mechanical dampers, but I haven't found anybody who's ever installed an active MAUS. Google hasn't been helpful either -- clearly not many people buy these things (and I'm in a major metro).

So I contacted the mechanical engineering firm that did an HVAC assessment for us last year and they do know this stuff, but after first telling me that I didn't need a 900cfm system, they offered to do an assessment and recommendation (covering everything from sizing to duct design to power to heat and humidity), for -- get this -- $8,000! You read that correctly. That does not include doing any of the work. Just a report. That's a hard no.

I called FanTech and they could only point me to a local equipment distributor, who has not returned my calls.

Any ideas of where to find help with?:

1. Duct work design and placement
2. Whether to integrate with A/C ducts do not have forced air heat)
3. Whether to spring for the inline heater
4. Whether I need to add any dehumidification
5. Programming/balancing the thing once installed

Engineering labor rates plus overhead and fees can only be affordable by large projects. You have to be the engineer. Try to get an advance copy of the Fantech MUA system installation instructions..

Depending on your tolerance for cold air filling your house, or at least your kitchen, a heater is desirable unless you live in zone 9.

Can't comment on dehumidification, but note full power operation is likely to be limited to a few 10s of minutes, and I haven't found any issue here in NH.

Don't integrate with existing a/c ducts unless you really know what you are doing.

Tell us what scheme Fantech uses for matching the hood flow rate. If they have a pressure (inside vs. out) measurement control, then you won't have to do any balancing.

Be sure that the MUA flow is not aimed at the hood from a nearby diffuser. Either aim away from the hood or put the diffuser far enough away to somewhat laminarize the flow. [CAUTION: invented word.]

For duct installation, you may be able to find a HVAC company that will help, or maybe find one of the remaining one-man contractors who has experience but will also read and listen.

MUA intake should be upwind of hood exhaust for dominant prevailing winds. Hood exhaust can also be higher on the roof, or directed down-roof away from the MUA intake location.

@opaone -

The overhead VAH in our previous home was very effective. We never had lingering odors or grease splatters or "gunk" on the cabinets, regardless of what was cooked, including bacon or ground beef. Sometimes chili splatters made it to the backsplash, but they wiped right off - I wouldn't expect any hood to capture chili!

Noise - it was a bit loud, but it was quieter and far, far more effective than the builder-grade one that came with the house when it was built (1995). If we ran it on low, it wasn't too bad. I could still hold a conversation with others in the Kitchen. I rarely used it any higher than low - it worked great on low, so the higher speeds weren't needed.

In our "new" house, we have a Kobe, which is pretty much worthless. It's louder than the VAH in our previous home and isn't very effective for any burner other than the center burner and even then it still doesn't capture all the steam from a large pot of boiling water for corn!

(I've only used a Dacor downdraft and it wasn't very effective.)

Thanks Kaseki as always.

I'm wondering if I should start a separate discussion about this.

I'm reviewing/discussing bids from 3 GCs for the larger project and also have hope that one of them (and their HVAC sub) displays an eagerness to learn about MUAS.

Separately, for duct placement, my gut tells me that this is a no-brainer design. Here's my thinking:

Compared to the original photo above, we are only moving the location of the ovens by about 7 inches to the left. The ovens are at the center of the house, with just an 8' ceiling, directly under a large open attic space. The hood remote blower could be installed on one side of the roof, and the MUAS intake could be on the other slope.

The MAUS duct could be placed anywhere but I was thinking that right above or to the left of the ovens might be ideal. Nobody stands in front of the ovens so a little breeze wouldn't be a problem. Plus being close to the hood minimizes negative impacts on house temp and humidity. I just don't know how close is too close.

(and perhaps it's a fantasy, but the lower oven is the broiler, and the top of that oven will be about 5 feet from the hood and 3 feet below it; on the occasions when I broil, I'd think I could turn the hood on high and some of the bursts of effluent when I open the door could be directed via that stream of air from duct above it left of oven to hood).

The important thing to avoid when introducing MUA into the kitchen is inducing turbulence into the uprising cooking plume. This requires the MUA air path from diffuser to hood to be longish so turbulence "settles down" during the traverse.

Besides providing a means to assure that uprising effluent enters the baffles and doesn't bounce out into the room, the room air will be evacuated/replaced as a consequence of the hood CFM exceeding (usually) the plume CFM of active burners/pans. Consequently, some MUA will be replacing room air and not just hood air.

Not going to complain about Fobest trolling the forums. Smart. But you guys sell 1200cfm systems with 8" ducts. If I've learned anything here it's that those ducts will choke that system.