As noted above, maybe a liner (hood without a fancy exterior) would be best for wood integration. I have a Wolf Pro Island hood, and it fits my desired hood height under an 8-foot ceiling by using a 1-foot extension. A seven-foot ceiling would seem to match the hood (or its equivalent liner) without an extension. In any case, island hoods are intended to duct upward, so you either have to put a bend in where the beams are, or continue through the ceiling. It is too bad that the main beam passes close to the chimney that you want to center the hood on. A large, quasi-commercial style hood at the ceiling could provide a large enough capture zone while being perhaps less obtrusive. Besides the question on the chimney sectional area, there is a possible issue with grease transport through a normal chimney, not that it hasn't been done for centuries, but then the heat source was a hot wood fire. The cooler internal tiles or whatever are being used to line the chimney will tend to collect grease more easily than thin sheet metal ducting that will tend to warm quickly. So the same issues as with wood creosote build-up may be in play. Also, using the chimney forces you to use an internal blower at the hood, rather than an external blower on the roof or exterior wall. An internal blower will be noisier for a given blower design and flow rate. What is above the ceiling by the chimney? kas

Did the previous owners get away with not having MUA? Might be because they installed the commercial stuff a long time ago and nobody asked about MUA. If the house is big enough and old enough, it might have been "leaky" enough that an MUA system was not needed. Or, the previous owners may very well have installed a make-up air system and it may have been the kind that was integrated with the commercial hood. The realtor should know or be able to find out from the previous owners. If that does not work, then you'll have to go looking for it because there are numbers of different kinds of MUA systems for commercial hoods. Some can even be part of the hood system. If you are interested, here's a resource that illustrates and discusses different kinds of commercial MUA systems which may give you some hints of where to look for MUA in your newly acquired kitchen. . http://www.fishnick.com/ventilation/designguides/CKV_Design_Guide_2_031504.pdf Also, check out Kaseki's clippings page. As for who you need for building/designing/installing an MUA system, there is no simple answer because it is not a one-size-fits-all or one-stop-shop kind of thing. The short answer to any MUA question will always be "it depends." If you live in a warm climate, MUA might be as simple as opening a window when you run the hood above 400 cfm. Or you might be able use a "MUA damper." There's a current thread on these. Here's the link: http://ths.gardenweb.com/forums/load/appl/msg0313214523464.html If you live in the great northland of cold winters (say, Minnesota) or in a place where air-conditioning is the norm for months (say, Phoenix), the MUA thing may involve air exchangers which gets a lot more complicated and expensive. About all I can suggest is that you look at the many postings about MUA over the last couple of years. A search using "kaseki + mua" should get you a lot of threads to look at. This post was edited by JWVideo on Sun, Mar 24, 13 at 1:54

The hyex is the blower? I think it's possible the silencer may not be so necessary ... I also think people who know about this may tell you that it is! Here's my experience. I just bought a 42" x 27" undercabinet hood with no blower and routed the 10" pipe up to the attic. It bent there at about, um, 80-degrees and the HVAC guy put the silencer in at that point and then added the fan. It was loud. So instead he added some more duct parallel with the ceiling which pulled the silencer further from the hood itself, if you follow. It got quiet. My HVAC guy, who is admittedly a nut, seemed to be of the opinion that the biggest reason for the improvement was simply the increased distance from the hood. I also talked him into making that extra duct run parallel to the ceiling - i.e. at a shallower angle than right-angling it straight away after it hit the attic; that may also have helped (he was a little reluctant because it was extra work but he's a really good guy and wanted very much to do a good job so when I turned around he'd done as I suggested: yeah!). So anyway, that's what this guy said - he's of the opinion that the silencer was "a waste of money" and the proximity-parameter was of biggest importance. I talked extensively with this amazingly nice guy at Tradewind and I'm pretty sure he would not agree; he'd credit the silencer more. If you have time and patience, I'd say you could try it without and if it's a problem, then get the silencer and pop it in. Just so you know, that silencer is *massive* - it's more like a jet engine than the blower itself. Good luck! BTW, I hope you don't have fussy neighbors too close. I opted not to use an outside blower because I was concerned with the noise it would impose on nearby neighbors; others have noted this problem with that blower I think. If you're miles from the next elk, it may not matter. If you have cranky neighbors 20 feet away, well...it seemed a problem worth preempting.

I can answer your question from experience as we have the exact same Culinarian cooktop configuration and opted for the 54x27 wooden hood with an insert from ModernAire. Our counters are 37-1/4 inches high, in part because we're tall but also because this pushes the cooktop an inch closer to the bottom of the hood, given a fixed hood height. Here are our finished measurements: 69-3/4 inches from floor to bottom of hood 32-1/2 inches from countertop to bottom of hood 31-3/4 inches from top of Culinarian stainless to bottom of hood (and the top of the iron grates are about 1 inch higher than the stainless, making the hood 30-3/4 above the top of the iron grates) We planned to mount the hood higher but dropped it down when we realized it is not a danger. One drawback of mounting the hood to high (in addition to poorer performance) is that you see the undersides more easily and some complain about the hood lights shining in their eyes or in the eyes of people sitting at the island. Plus the perceived noise is higher if there's a straight shot from your ears to the underside of the hood. We have never bumped into the hood and it would be almost impossible to do so because the rounded front of the Culinarian sticks out past the front edge of the countertop, making the cooks stand further out from the back wall. The wood hood itself is 54W x 27D, so the opening is less (perhaps I should have made the opening this dimension). Just now I discovered the hood sticks out only 26-1/2 inches from the back wall. This is due to the backsplash installed after the cabinets, as usual. A 24 inch deep hood would be a disaster with this cooking machine. I wish we had gone 27 inches deep on the inside of the hood, making the outside of the hood about 27-3/4 inches deep before backsplash. But I suggest you get rid of the shelf on the front of the hood unless you place it up higher. Even then it will block light from ceiling. If you have a deeper cabinet made for the Culianrian (not sure if you're getting a cooktop or a range) make sure your cabinetmaker doesn't make the cabinet too deep or it will result in your cooktop being pushed away from the back wall too far, negating the extra depth you built into your hood. We have an Abbaka 1400CFM fan on the roof, and it sucks well, even with a couple of bends. We've had no problem with smoke from wok cooking but amazingly we haven't used the grill yet. We're still dealing with tons of punch list items so we haven't gotten around to wrapping the grill parts in foil prior to firing it up. To fit the insert in the hood we had Modernaire ship the insert directly to out cabinetmaker so he could build the wood hood to match the insert. During the design phase we made mockups from foam board. I suggest you do the same if you want to play with the dimensions. Good luck with your project! Billy