Okay, I see the confusion. The linked site seems to be mixing up concepts of (a) makeup air (MUA) and room venting into (b) trying to figure baseline minimum hood capacity while (c) throwing in a formula for off-setting efficiency losses caused by bends in the vent ducting (bends reduce the effectiveness of airflow.) To me, the air-change calcuation seems a bit misleading. It looks more like the kind of calculation used for a room venting fan --- say, a ceiling vent fan as for a steamy bathrooms --- rather than a range hood over a cooking appliance which is intended to vent a specific small part of the room. The HVI standard is a suggestion for very tight homes and is not code. FWIW, the 15 air-changes per hour is for the specific kitchen area itself and even the large room you willhave is not going to require very much venting power. So, for practical purposes, you do not need to mess with this for the range hood because any hood with at least 600 CFM will be more than sufficient. But there are a several other things for you to consider and those may lead you to a larger hood and a better appreciation of MUA. Number 1, a newly constructed house is likely to be pretty tight. Are there local code requirements for a MUA system? Even without code requirements, MUA for a new house is important to prevent backdrafting of appliances like gas water heaters, HVAC furnaces, and fireplaces/woodstoves. Adding extra-power to your rangehood can complicate that. Bathroom fans are typically below the threshold for needing MUA and risking backdrafting, but rangehoods can be a lot more powerful. Fortunately, adding MUA for the other appliances can be pretty simple and inexpensive. There are also relatively inexpensive simple MUA vents for kitchen rangehoods in warm climates. This is something to discuss with your builder. Number 2, home air exchanges are a whole house issue that require addressing when you have a new and very tight/very energy efficient house. It is a separate consideration and, if you live in a cold climate, you may need an air exchanger regardless of how much of a range hood you have. As far as having air-changes in the kitchen, you've got the adjoining great-room space. The linked site's kitchen air change calculation assumes a confined kitchen which has to draw air from other spaces, but the large space you have avoids that as a problem, I think. Number 3, look at range hood design. It sounds like your stove/cooktop will be going against a wall where you can have a canopy-type range hood. These are more efficient at gathering vapors, excess heat. etc. than the stylish but less efficient flat-bottomed and curved-glass designer vents. If you will be using one of the latter, you probably want more CFMs because they are less efficient than the canopy units at collecting the stuff that needs venting. Finally, the general rule of thumb, as you probably know, is that you want a hood that extends three inches to either side of your cooktop in order to better capture the steam/smoke that may be spreading horizontally. This is a suggestion and a rule of thumb, not a requirement, of course. A 36-inch 600-700 cfm canopy hood (such as a Kobe) would probably work very well. You might want a bit more CFM for a flat-bottomed style of venting hood. So, talk to the builder about MUA and code requirements, and think about the design of the hood you are getting.

You don't have to run away from here. You have a pretty good understanding of cars at this point and that's important. I have to deal with situations all of the time, where the only thing some people are thinking about is saving themselves money, and they totally forget what "fair" really means. Fair is always something that works for BOTH parties. I can't tell you why "BrakeMax" didn't see a gaping hole in an "air intake hose". I suppose you are either describing the plenum hose between the air cleaner and MAF sensor, and the throttle body, or some other vacuum hose, or a hose that directs air for the IAC. I can envision quite a number of different systems, and I don't have specifics on exactly what vehicle you own. So I'll stick with the plenum hose, since an air leak between the MAF and the engine will severely affect performance. A DPFE will give you a check engine light, but have little or no effect on performance. I won't rule out the possiblity that the plenum hose simply finally completely failed after the DPFE was looked at. They do have to flex constantly, and are a common failure item. There are several master mechanics on this forum. I looked at that web site. It looks pretty good. But still taking a code, and then asking advice about what could be wrong, is still leaving the wrong impression. Follow this. 2002 Pontiac Grand Am with a 3.1l Auto. It's setting a code P0101, that is a Mass Air Flow Sensor performance code. This car is owned by a family friend, who happens to work at an Auto Zone! They pulled the code and wanted to replace his MAF. Jason chose wisely and brought the car to me to test first. By monitoring scan data and taking snapshots for playback I was able to measure the reported volumetric efficiency (VE) of the engine. VE is the measurement of the actual amount of air the engine can pump. For example, a 3.1l engine at 5000rpm should easily pump 160grams or air per second at wide open throttle. Jason's MAF sensor was reporting 90 to 105 grams per second, and struggled to get over 4500 rpm. VE measured 55%. Well that's why it had a P0101, the computer knows how much air the engine should be pumping, based on throttle opening and rpm. At this point, there are still several possible causes for the code. A bad MAF is clearly one of them. Funny you should mention it, but a torn plenum hose would do the same. Some type of an engine mechanical issue could do this, heck even a very bad air filter could actually have given the same findings. But there is one more, how about a restricted exhaust? The test for this is to remove the front O2 sensor, and install a gage and actually measure the back pressure. The spec allows for a maximum of 1.25PSI, and that's under a load. Simply speeding the engine up in neutral had this one building 14 PSI. The fix was to replace the catalytic convertor, which was still under the 8yr/80,000 mile warranty at the dealer. No one, reading a forum would effectively lead the poster to that diagnosis. There were more details uncovered during the testing that helped make the decision to measure the back pressure. One of them was by watching the long term and short term fuel trims on the scan tool while driving the car. If the engine was actually getting more air than was being reported, then they would have been shifted way positive, because the engine would have been too lean. But because the MAF was actually reporting how much air was truly entering the engine, they were reasonably close to neutral. I can remember when I first started working on cars, I was 14 when I tore down my first Chevrolet 350 to put a cam in it, and had a valve job done on it. My grandfather had given my dad the car because it was running so bad. BTW, that wasn't my first engine job, I did a head gasket in a lawn tractor a few years before that. The thing here is there are people who are born with the ability to do this work. I suspect you are one of them, just like I am. It's not easy work, and most of the time the pay actually stinks, especially when you keep dumping huge pieces of your paycheck to buy more and more tools. But if someone really likes fixing cars, there is a freedom there that few other fields can offer. Now do you know why it's hard to find a good motorcycle mechanic? Probably because it's too hard for them to make enough money to stay in the field long enough to get really good at it. Running a repair shop, cars or motorcycles is expensive. The overhead eats some 60% of the gross profit, and then the wages and benefits start coming out before the owner finally gets his/her piece of the pie. Your couple of quotes about how much something was going to cost you if a shop had done the work, fails to show exactly how much profit the shop would have actually made if they had done it. In short, less than $125/hr of profit would have me working for free. That's how much it costs to run a shop like mine. That means, I would have to diagnose, and repair your air hose problem in about 35 minutes based on the numbers you provided, and be hard into the next job, or else I would not actually make any money at all. I invest heavily in O.E scan tools and software. That's one of the reasons it's so expensive for my shop to operate. The facts are, if I could double my parts mark-ups, and double my labor tomorrow, (and still stay busy) and then throw all of that money into more software and O.E scan tools and I'd actually still be losing ground. In 1993 I had one scan tool, a Snap-On MT2500. I could work on anything that showed up at the door. Today that same capability would cost more than 1/4 million, and the updates, and software licensing for the tools would continue to eat tens of thousands of dollars each year to continue to support them. You are correct, you don't have to be overly mechanically inclined to do some repairs. You do have to be very gifted for many others. Plus anymore you just about need a business degree to balance the pennies so that you have a chance to be there for the customer in the first place. The others that post here have seen some of my diatribes like this one. If you want to learn about cars stick around, just give us some room to earn a living. We should not have to apologize for trying to do that. ASE CMAT L1 30yrs exp.

Thanks arielitas_mom! yes,my plan is to make a nice, big, luxurious tiled shower along the same wall that the corner shower is now. Probably about 39" w x 6 feet long (unless that's TOO long...). I do feel like this is a compromise, since a 3BR/2BA (and lts face it, most people will use it as 2BR/2BA/office) feels like it's step down, as far as the target market, from the 3BR/3BA/office we'd planned when we bought it. But it's good to hear some positive feedback from you folks about the compromise, because it really would stretch us too far to do the addition. Thank you! So what do you all think about the fact that there's no proper dining room? The DR area is really more of a dining "nook" and there's no place to put a really big dining table. ?????

If I understand this right, you will only be putting one or two outlets in each run? One wall is 47" & I want one wall plug and one under cabinet plug. 2nd wall is 45 ½" & I want both plugs under cabinet. 3rd wall is 36 ½ "with both plugs under cabinet. So why not just put outlets in? And the price of plugmold might make you rethink this option. I scratched the plugmold and went with outlets every 2 1/2 to 3 feet. I put mine up high under the upper cabs. You don't see them standing up but you do sitting down. I do have to bend over to plug things in. don't like that but it was a choice. Since this is DIY the number of outlets will only be the cost of materials. A roll of wire is about a hundred bucks but you'll probably have that anyway and outlets, boxes, covers come to less than $5 a piece if you don't get anything fancy. Price plugmold per outlet.