lamermaid: Great points, and a great ongoing conversation. I have been perhaps overly repetitive in my opinions about VAH hoods. Like others (keitel comes to mind, especially as his (her?) "My Ventahood drives me insane" thread has recently been resurrected), what makes me crazy are the large number of posters who automatically suggest VAH as the "best" option whenever a ventilation request is posted. In particular, I am struck by how many folks who tout VAH's do so based on one of two things: 1) "the salesman at my appliance store says VAH is the best and that the [fill in the blank] hood is inferior because of..... (failing to mention that it's the only brand of hoods he sells) or 2) "I have one and I think it's great" (posted by someone who has never had a hood other than a VAH to compare to). In contrast, you are someone with personal experience with more than one brand and style of hood. Thus, your opinion counts, in my mind, much more. And I do believe that much of the advantage that I perceive in my hood is not so much from the fact that it's an MA, but rather than we have a remote blower and silencer, which I think is a wonderful setup. The reason I've been such an MA fan is the amazing customer support. I also love dealing with a small, American company that still actually manufactures here in the States (when I called to check on the status of my hood, the woman who answered literally ran back into the shop, found my hood under construction, spoke with guy building it, and came back with a hard estimate on completion--try that with VAH or Broan!). If I can buy a handcrafted, custom hood, which uses proven baffle technology, and which allows the use if desired of a remotely located blower, infinitely variable speed control, remote switching for lights and fan speed, etc, for the same price as a VAH--which if I'm not mistaken, requires the use of four separate squirrel cage blowers, each of which needs to be washed by hand, to achieve 1200 cfm, then I'm hard pressed to understand why the VAH would be a better choice. But.....as you've already pointed out, mine is an overly-obsessed opinion that everyone should take with multiple grains of salt. Having said that, we still love our Dacor PGM36 cooktop. It was my first experience with a modern, high performance cooktop and I still have lots of fun cooking on it. It's a great looking piece, still love the blue LED indicators on the knobs, and the 15K burner is more than adequate for my frequent searing etc. For that "space" (36'' five burner drop-in cooktop) I still can't see anything that would outdo it. The Lacanche is however at another level entirely. It's just a piece of art, classic, yet performs fabulously, with two 18K burners, two ovens, french top, etc etc. I do think it's a tougher question if you're limited to roughly 30'', and to only the one oven in the range, and I'd think hard about that choice--we also liked the Wolf and I'd be very happy, though not quite so passionate, if that was what we had gotten. Post questions to the longstanding LC thread.

leel.....glad to get your feedback on the induction. Thanks! As for me, I certainly wouldn't mind having to buy a new pan or 2 for the new oven. :-) gsciencechick....thanks for the pots and pans suggestions and the confirmation about induction. I'm ready to be done with gas (although I love the way it cooks) because it's just so dirty to keep clean. muskokascp.....I HEAR you!!! Whatever happened to the days when we just went to the store and asked the opinion of the saleman or perhaps picked out a unit because of style or color? These days we almost have too much info, and it can become crippling, honestly. At some point I just need to make a decision. davidro1.....I love your 'final answer' comment. I WISH!!!! Although I certainly know a lot more than I knew before, I still have questions. But today at the appliance store helped clear up some things. (Meaning that they don't know anything either and I can basically do whatever I want). The inspector on our job (both HVAC and electrical) don't know anything about MUA and can't advise us what we should get. So I just told them I'd get something that wasn't too powerful, and they seemed fine with that. They told us to adhere to the recommendations in the manual that comes with the hood. I swear!!! It's not rocket science.....why is it that nobody knows about this technology?

If the function of the hood were to air out the house, then the number of burners running at once might determine the desired flow rate. But that is not how hoods are intended to be used when cooking. The hood is intended to immediately capture the rising and expanding effluent (from any burners) and then contain the effluent using sufficient air velocity at every point under the baffles to both contain and partially degrease the rising effluent as it winds past the baffles. To do this the air velocity generated by the hood blower has to be high enough that smoke not "reflect" out of the hood aperture when it reaches it and finds a restriction. Uprising velocity can be 3 ft/s. At the very least the baffle gaps need this flow rate to assure containment. My rule of thumb is to take the capture aperture area in square feet and multiply by 90 cfm/sq.ft. This will be the desired actual achievable flow rate. No blower system will achieve its rated flow rate in a real environment. Even if we give VAH credit for an actual flow rate of an entire hood and blower assembly (in this case 600 cfm or 1200 cfm), once the ducts and make-up air (MUA) restrictions are included the actual flow rate reduces. And no information has ever crossed my attention horizon that specifies how VAH measure their purported flow rates, so we can't be sure that they are anything other than magic numbers. If I were to use a VAH in this context, I would buy the 1200 cfm rated unit and hope that I could run it at less than full speed for reduced noise and still achieve capture and containment of hot rising effluent from pans, griddles, or whatever. Boiling eggs will not require this level of flow rate (or any for that matter). But unless the 48-inch range is purely a poser installation, at some point you will use it to cook something that generates grease and smoke. Even capturing much of the oven output when it is opened will require a decent flow rate. Don't forget that for either blower there has to be a source of MUA. The actual flow rate out of the hood is always matched by the flow rate into the house, and if the latter is small, then so will the former. But worse, while that is happening the house pressure falls, and combustion appliances can back-draft, potentially inducing CO into the house. This is hazardous. So plan ahead how you intend to provide low pressure drop MUA. kas

You'll be fine. People have fried bacon for years without venting at all. I use an electric skillet for larger amounts of bacon instead of using my range. No problems no horrid smells. No grease on the cabinets or counter. Properly cooked bacon is a slow process over low to medium heat. I only turn on my vent for heavier cooking. All this angst on this forum about venting is downright silly. Unless you are high heat cooking for hours on end on all burners the recommendations are way over rated. And some people just love to spend other people's money. It's refreshing to hear the appliance dealer didn't try to upsell you. Cooking smells in houses is a good thing. It's what makes a house a home. Range hoods are for removing combustion products,smoke, heat, airborn grease, and steam from the area above the cook top. They were never designed to be whole house ventilation systems. Windows let in fresh air. Range hoods remove cooking effluent.