I used to have a Green Machine that had attachments available for it. It had a cultivater, and edger, blower, and maybe a dethatcher. All I had was the string trimmer and blower. I liked that machine a lot and gave it to my dad at some point. The blower was strong and the trimmer head worked great. I would think that it was a much better tool then anything that you would find from Sears though. My trimmer these days is the Echo 2601 and I don't bother with a blower.

Actually hood ventilation noise consists primarily of two components - blower or blower mechanical noise and airflow noise (ignoring vibration caused from a cheap and poorly constructed hoods). A low quality blower will introduce mechanical noise hence one should always strive to install the best quality blower you can - each of those blower options below have specific areas of use - an inline blower mounted remotely will reduce immediate mechanical noise versus an internal blower in the hood HOWEVER an inline blower brings its own risks in terms of resonance (air waves from blower oscillations and minute vibrations) in a confined area. An external blower mounted close to the hood is about the same as an internal blower in the hood - one typically uses an external blower if you have a difficult duct run - sucking air from the end of the duct run along a convoluted and long duct run is far more efficient than trying to PUSH air from inside the hood via an internal blower along the same duct run. At the end of the day noise has mainly two components - poor quality blower that introduces excessive mechanical noise (there will always be some but this can be mitigated by using a good quality blower) and most importantly the QUALITY of the duct run - a duct run that is too small or multiple 90 elbows or has been crimped(dented badly at installation) OR using the ribbed aluminum stuff versus smooth HVAC galvanized ducting introduces a lot of air flow noise - of course the type and design of the filtration system also introduces airflow noise in the hood. By far the biggest problem we have found in over 20 years of custom range hood sales and installations is ducts that are far to small for the airflow generated by the internal blower - modern blowers (good quality ones) sense duct restrictions and run faster (more revolutions and therefore more mechanical noise) to compensate and delivery the requested volume of airflow - a simple mathematical calculation will illustrate this - a 6 " duct which everyone believes is adequate provides 28.28 sq inches of airflow capacity whereas an 8" duct supports 50.28 sq inches - nearly double the volume of airflow - so of course an 8" duct is far more efficient and is why we recommend an 8" duct over a 6" for 600cfm and 10" duct over 8" for 900cfm and 1200cfm. An added tip - another benefit of external blowers is that because they are far more efficient at moving air over distances and bad duct runs is an 8" duct is sufficient for say a 900cfm or 1200cfm external blower - qualification of course being a high quality external blower system such as ours - cant comment on the others out in the market - as always you get what you pay for......at Custom Range Hoods we are always willing to help and will assist anyone with technical questions - placing an order with us will of course open the door to a mountain of experience and good advice - feel free to email us at allenl@customrangehoods.ca.

thanks for the information... I think one of my biggest questions was just weather not I could stick in inline blower on any hood that did not come with a blower...because I was finding the a lot of the hood that come without blower specify that they only work with internal blowers are only work is remote blowers but I thought I'd be able to hook an inline up to any of them. I really like the look of the wolf hoods...and there is a shop near me that sells a lot of used wolf appliances including hoods that often include blowers for pretty good prices. I might give them a call and see if they can source of 42 in hood without a blower and then I can just pick up an inline blower somewhere else. and as you mentioned about the inline being quieter... That's literally the only reason I would want an inline blower or a remote blower is to make it a little bit quieter in the kitchen. if the blower is in the hood then it's going to take an immediate 90-degree turn to go through the top cabinets and then out the sidewall about 8 feet away from the hood...and I think from what I've been reading that the 90-degree turn in addition to having a blower right there in the middle of the kitchen is going to be really loud. so now I am exploring whether or not we might remodel the bathroom upstairs which would allow us to do a straight shot from the hood up through the attic for in line blower and then out the roof to vent

I will limit my comment to adaptation, and not address all the things one could do if one threw away the purchase. If I had to use this device, I would set it higher by enough that sheet metal could be used to connect the wood cabinetry base to the insert base with angled stainless-steel surfaces. I would suggest an angle from horizontal of around 60 degrees so that rising and expanding effluent (cooking plumes) would reflect toward the baffles. This would also provide some volume for capture of transient high velocity plumes (e.g., opening a pan cover), and also a means of keeping the plume portions that reflect from the baffle plate flat surfaces in the volume long enough to entrain them into the air flow. Choose a blower rated at a sufficiently high CFM that with baffle, duct, and make-up air pressure loss you can achieve 90 ft/min across the entire aperture of the extended cabinet base area. For example, with a 54 x 27 inch base area (10 sq. ft.) you would need 900 CFM and the blower needs to be perhaps 1400 CFM at zero static pressure. ideally, for lower noise, this blower should be outside with a silencer in the duct in between, although this may not apply here. However, because this added base area drives up the needed air flow rate, baffle noise likely will be higher than would otherwise be caused by the baseline 1000 CFM blower. Note that a 60 degree angle implies a baffle height distance above the cooktop of 1.7X the distance between baffle plate edge and cabinet edge. Some angles will have to be different to fit unless the baffle plate and the cabinet section are congruent in shape. A sheet metal shop should be able to cut and bend the necessary sheet metal. As you note, it should overlap the wood at the bottom, for safety and cleaning. Do not make the common mistake of designing the exit ventilation system without in parallel designing the intake (make-up) air system.