Congrats. I see from the pic you posted that you have the similar dull stainless spill area by the burners. We've found this to be a dream to keep clean. Same deal as you. We use a damp sponge with just a little tad of dish soap to clean up grease etc. and then wipe it down with a soft towel to dry. Works a treat. Smell wise in the oven.....we ran the oven for probably two hours when we first got it. Ran it at about 350 for a while and then turned it up. We then ran the broiler for a while as it produced a smell as well as it burned things off. Took a couple of times maybe for the smell to totally go away (going off memory). Be sure to read the instruction manual thoroughly. Tells you how to use the convection and also not to cover the bottom with foil or anything. We love ours. We have the 36 AG 6 burner. Tonnes of real estate for pots. We can both stand side by side and cook on it which is nice. Some things we found with ours... Same as you, you will need to re learn how to set the temp on the burners. Our old range we had to crank everything on high, this one now we just look at where the flame pattern is on the pan bottom so it isn't going up the sides and leave it at that. For the most part, except for huge stock pots we have, we are cooking on med low to low. Simmer works great! Oven works well and has a large capacity. Takes a bit to preheat the 36, but we just turn it on when we are in the prep stage and it is ready by the time we are. Don't go off the ready lamp. I've found it takes a bit longer to get to full temp all around the cavity. We use a good quality oven thermom. I do find that with the oven convection on, if an item is placed too close to the fan on the rack that it will tend to brown faster there than in the front of the oven. We use (right or wrong) convection when we do pizza on a stone on the bottom rack. Half way through cooking I spin the pizza to get it even. No biggie and makes a great pizza. With the AG at times we've found when first preheating the oven that we can get some condensation on the back splash area (stainless also). Just have to remember to pop the vent hood on for the first few minutes to keep things circulating. At least that is the way it works for us. Cleaning the oven we use soft scrub or just a sponge with mild soapy water (hot) and a towel to wipe out. Works on most as we don't let things get too far gone. Cooked a ham that spattered everywhere. Trully horrific! Did what I could wiping etc. and finally used a cold oven cleaner. Just a few minutes I was able to wipe it out and the oven is clean as new again! Just be sure not to spray the temp probe in the top of the oven. At least that is where ours is. We love the fact that the range is industrial and simple construction. Whole thing is made for function and it works well. Happy cooking! Cheers

Several points: 1) Higher cfm will not make up entirely for decreased capture area. I think of blower performance as what determines how quickly smoke etc. that has been captured by the hood can be evacuated. Inadequate cfm means the hood will not clear fast enough to "make room" for incoming smoke, thus leading to spillover. However, an overly small capture area means that some smoke will never enter the hood at all. Remember that smoke diffuses laterally as it rises, and that is compounded if there is any cross-current of room air. As a first approximation, smoke that drifts laterally beyond the edge of your hood is lost no matter how high the cfm rating is. Kind of like trying to go faster on an icy road by installing a bigger engine, when the limiting factor is the spinning tires. Re haus proud's comments: all of the major hood manufacturers other than VAH allow remote blower installation. In the case of the OP, though, it sounds like he/she is venting through a side wall. That eliminates possibility of using a blower mounted inside. Only remote option would be to mount an external fan on the side of the house, which on the first floor of a house would look pretty weird. "Air intake surface covering entire underside of hood"? Isn't that all of them, except for some of the "Euro-style" hoods that have a flat piece of glass extending beyond the edges of the hood? Otherwise, the entire underside of any hood is "capture area." However, that is not related to airflow noise. That is almost all generated at the actual point where the ducting connects to the hood. "Forcing" the air through the much narrower diameter duct causes acceleration and turbulence, thus the noise. And remember that the largest duct in any standard hood is 10'', so that's pretty much fixed independent of brand. weissman: my experience differs somewhat. I have a 42'' 600 cfm VAH over a 36'' Dacor cooktop. I clearly get spillover. May reflect how I cook: I love to sear (favorite salmon recipe involves preheating dry pan on max heat for 4 minutes then dumping in fish). I'm hoping the new hood with 1200 cfm remote blower will do better over the Lacanche, and if I could, I would choose a different hood with higher cfm over the Dacor as well. Agree totally that increasing the depth from standard 24'' to 27'', or at least mounting the hood out an extra 3'' or so will partially compensate for the narrow width. amysrq: re choice of hoods--all the companies you name are good choices. As always I'll throw in a plug for Modern-Aire (Modern-Aire) with whom I've had an excellent experience. I know others have liked Metallo Arts for really wild, over the top designs. Any of these companies would make a good hood for you. I think it's more of a design decision: find one you like the looks of and you should do fine.

Do you have a budget? I ask because there are a lot of things out there but they vary in price. For a range like the NXR you want at least 600 CFM. You also want to look at how you clean the hood. I shied away from the vent-a-hood because some reviews indicated they were difficult to clean.

If your contractor doesn't know you should be able to call the county and someone should be able to answer that question pretty easily. Here is a link to all of the county offices. http://www.montgomerycountymd.gov/mcg/dept_contact.html