First, yes, a hood liner is what you are looking for. Next, I believe the minimum recommended CFM for a Wolf 36-6 is 900 CFM. Food for thought... you are getting a range top that most REALLY enjoy cooking on. As you use the Wolf, you may find that you cook more and more and use more than 2 burners more often than not. Consider over sizing the minimum CFM requirements just in case (maybe 1200-1500. It doesn't cost that much more and then you can run the blower at less than max most of the time. Next, go with a remote blower or in-line if you can. It will be MUCH quieter. Finally, consider a 42 inch hood liner and a 48 inch capture space. This will create a very effective exhaust system. We put in a 60 inch Blue Star that required 1800 CFM. In the liner system we went with, the closest blower was 2000 CFM but we upgraded to the 2500 CFM remote blower ($250 upgrade) and had a 72 inch capture area built. We did match a 60 inch hood liner with a 60 inch range b/c anything over 60 inches is custom and automatically double. Building the capture area at 72 inches worked fine but if I could have, I would have gone 66 inches on the liner. At any rate, I use the hood most of the time at about half power and it is almost silent. At full speed, you can still have a conversation next to it at normal levels. Lastly, there are a lot of really good hood liners out there and Wolf is certainly one. Independent is another and I used a Prestige high capacity hood liner b/c I REALLY like its baffle system design. I had never heard of Prestige before we got the Blue Star but I am really pleased with its performance.

We are actually looking for the third range since 2007. I have a Wolf Df that has failed after 4 1/2 years. From my experience with my revolving appliances, the old idea that appliances show their faults the first year is no longer true. If you do have a problem the first year and it is fixed, the problem may be recurrent and not covered in subsequent years. In years past, an appliance had a problem because a part was bad and you could fix it and it was ok. Now it just seems like the whole design is bad or a part is made cheap and that makes many problems recurrent. Some problems can just show up later. A component that used to last 30 years now fails after 3 or 4 years. We considered BS before we bought the Wolf and drove 250 miles to see it. The fit and finish is more industrial and there were issues with the door and the service at the time. I think that that is better now. Now the main issue for me would be complaints by some that the door is "hot" but of course this is very subjective. We chose Wolf because at the time they were known for reliability and I wanted the DF. HA! As much as I liked my Wolf electric range oven, I have given up on the idea of DF range now but I do have an Electrolux wall oven. We are back to considering BS again. I also considered the AR Performer but the glass and enamel are not covered at all under warranty, not even the first year and with my track record... The main issue that I have read with LP is if you have to use a conversion kit for a range that is natural gas you have a loss of BTUs. but the BS has a model that comes made for LP so no loss of BTUs. I have used many different gas and electric ovens over many years and of course you can bake in a gas oven. You can not make an arbitrary statement that one is" better" or more even than the other. There is much more to it. Evenness of heat can be increased to some extent by the convection fan and when you add the third and even fourth element, it helps even more but the mass of the oven with radiant heat also contributes a lot. Convection is not optimal for everything so when you are not using it, you are reliant on the design of the oven. I have had plain conventional ovens gas and electric that heated pretty evenly. I had a convection oven with multiple modes that was a nightmare in that respect, very uneven. The Wolf and Elux function well but have the issues with the interiors. It all boils down to the engineering and when you start adding all the different modes, it is harder to get it right. Wolf and Electrolux do have it right as far as function. Some considerations about gas and electric ovens. These are just some differences and they may or may not be important to you. In a gas oven because there is combustion, there is much more ventilation so more heat in the kitchen. It also allows the moisture from the combustion of gas to be vented out of the oven so you have a dry heat but also moisture in your house. This is great for roasting and browning and for baking after the rise is completed, but not as great for the first half of baking breads and other things that have to rise. An electric oven is more of a closed system so will hold the moisture from what is cooking. This allows more time before the exterior of cake/bread sets and allows a longer time to rise. It also allows for increased starch gelatinization making a crispy and glossy crust on bread. It also holds on to added steam that many use in bread baking. Many commercial bakeries do use gas ovens but they have steam injectors if humidity is crucial to what they are baking. If you read some of the baking forums, bread bakers at home have a harder time keeping steam in a gas oven. You can increase "drying" in an electric oven with a convection fan. Look at the broiler. Some gas ovens have an infrared broiler it can be very narrow. The number of passes in a electric oven can also vary, but they are much wider. We use that wide broiler because I am always doing big trays of things like appetizers. Other people like the infrared broiler because they are doing a couple of steaks more than big trays. The swing of temperature in the oven is regulated by the thermostat. The normal swing is 25F on either side of the set temperature. There are some that produce a much narrower swing and usually this is with an electric oven. It is often a selling point but does it actually matter? I can't say. One thing I would avoid is the type of oven that will only allow the preheat or fast recovery to come on if there is a differential of 100-150F between the set temp and the actual temp. This is some times disclosed in the handbook but not always. Some electric ovens have a third and maybe fourth element and dual fans. This is supposed to help create even heat when the oven is full if it works the way it is supposed to. I often cook for 20-35 and sometimes for as many as 60 so I loved that I could pack my 36 inch Wolf and have everything bake evenly. I really miss that. Check out the size of the ovens on the interior. Check the actual size of the rack. Notice the height of the oven in relation to the racks not the bottom of the oven. Some electric ovens have computer boards to produce all kinds of effects form combinations of the elements and fans. I do like being able to direct heat from the top for roasting or the bottom for baking. There is a bit of a learning curve with these features and vary brand to brand. Some consider computer boards a liability. My biggest worry was that the electronics in my ovens would go out. It was kind of funny that it was the structure that failed. It just goes to show that the things you worry about aren't the things that actually happen. One thing I have found helpful is to read about appliances how appliances work from from actual users. It is one thing to look at a list of features and another to say how the appliance actually works. You can also learn a lot from reading the user manual. Have you seen this thread below from some who have the Performer? There are many posts on BlueStar as well. Have a look at some of the videos on youtube. Some are marketing videos but you can get an idea of how the burners work. Deegeaux , I am curious about this statement in your post. "The only electric oven, IMO, good enough to even consider paying the premium is Wolf. Since you own the Gag and often recommend it, have you changed your mind about this? Why don't you recommend it now? How do you recommend Wolf, which you don't own especially with all of the ongoing blue porcelain issues?

Your right on the Culinarian's price. That is with the self cleaning oven. It would be another $400 to get a color added. The manual clean is closer to $4K which would put it in the same price range as Wolf, Viking and others. I have looked at the Blue Star and Bertazzoni's. For the Berta's the added $500 for color moves it too close to the Blue Star and the Open burner Viking. Plus I really don't like the look of their grates, there seems to be too much space between the tines. But the build looks really high quality. Our situation is complicated in that we've had to replace some old appliances that were failing, but we aren't ready to remodel the whole kitchen and probably won't for at least 5 years. When we do remodel we may put in a 36" instead of 30". Also the whole vent situation adds another cost, at least we have the ducting to the outside. Who knows I may convince my wife yet that a pro style range has too many added capabilities. All of the GE ranges I've looked seemed to be of high quality in terms of fit and finish. We were at a summer rental that had a two oven stove with the small oven on top and that really seemed to be a good arrangement in that for single sheets you did not have to heat a large oven. The GE two oven units (gas or dual fuel) only come with an oven drawer on the bottom and it is my understanding that they take a very long time to preheat. There is also a Kitchenaid/Maytag unit that has a similar arrangement to the Frigidaire but both high power burners are at the front of the range. I want at least one high power burner in the back for boiling water and stuff as I have two young kids and want to put pots as far from their reach as possible.

I copied a post titled "FP double oven - spillage inside glass window!" from December 30, 2006 into Word, but I cannot find it online now in either the Kitchens or Appliances Forum. Below are some excerpts that may be helpful to you. Alice Posted by proudmamato4 (My Page) on Sat, Dec 30, 06 at 13:26 This is unbelievable. Last night I was making Macaroni and Cheese casserole for my DH's birthday dinner. I had the casserole on the rack and was sliding it in, when the rack caught (you should know these racks don't slide smoothly). The sauce spilled out, down through the crevice in the upper oven, and into the lower oven, into the inside of the window panel!!! I do not understand how FP can make the opening between the two glass panes open from the top?!? When I open the lower oven door slightly, I can look down into the inside of the glass, where my cheese sauce is now residing happily, along with a bunch of dust. Now FP wants me to get a technician out to take my door apart to clean it. This is after a technician came out a month ago to rewire my ovens after my thermal coupler kept blowing after a self-clean. Now my ovens are very noisy when they run, like something is loose in the back. I've even taken out all the racks in case they were vibrating, and that's not it. Any idea if we can take apart the door ourselves and clean it? TIA, Nancy I just wanted to let you know that FINALLY DH and I took the door off the oven yesterday. We unscrewed the panel, and then unscrewed the metal that held the glass in. Lifting it up gently, I used Windex to clean off the offending Mac and cheese sauce, then we started to put it back together. We had a little trouble lining up the gaskets just right, but in the end, everything worked out great, and my door is CLEAN again! I can't believe how long it's been bugging me. It was like my eyes were drawn to that spill everytime I was in the kitchen. This is now the 4th appliance I've had hands-on experience taking apart and/or fixing. I'm loving that I am no longer afraid. Nancy