I don't know your range location, If it's on an outside wall can't you vent through the wall?

The range is indeed on an outside wall. The current JennAir downdraft exhausts through the basement wall below.

Venting straight back through the kitchen wall would be a great solution that would displace minimal cupboard space above. The hoods we've been looking at all seem to have to vent up (vertical)before they go out (horizontal).

If it is possible to go from the back of the hood unit straight back without elbows, etc., our problem would be solved.

This BlueStar hood is pricey and just basic styling but it does feature top or rear exhaust.

Here is a link that might be useful: BlueStar top or rear exhaust hood

I suppose anything you do overhead will take up some of your cabinet space. But as far as knocking your heads, have you looked at a hood liner that can be surrounded with cabinet panels? You could design it yourself to minimize injury.

Maria410 - Thank you so much for the picture of your beautiful kitchen! It's hard to envision a virtual kitchen without visual aids!

Do you remember off-hand how high you mounted your hood? We are going with the taller uppers as well, and may have to go higher than recommended for the hood height because the cooks in the house are 6' - 6'4''. The specs for the Kobe hood that we've been looking at show the opening for the ductwork at the top of the unit. I'm assuming that yours was at the back? Do these things come with options?

I have a Broan E661 which vents out the back with no loss of cabinet space.

Here is a link that might be useful: Broan E661

Supposedly the latest trend, if you like/are a trend follower. Different, but would take some getting used to. I would be afraid I might miss those upper cabs, and be short on storage space. ;o)

Here is a link that might be useful: no cabs..

Thanks so much to all who so graciously weighed in on our dilemma! I too am scared of the functionality of the 'no cab' look, although it is stunning visually.

I spent part of the afternoon researching the sliding hood concept. I don't know that it leaves any more of the upper cabinets accessible, but it would mean that tall folk only endangered their temples 'on demand', rather than 24/7! They seem to have their attendant problems too, just like every other option.

Thanks warmfridge for that link to the Broan E661. I'll have to check on the CFM rating, but it is very attractive and the sone rating was impressive.

DH actually wants to consider pop-up downdraft after all the years we insisted we needed the real deal! He seems to think that the technology must have improved since our circa 1980 JennAir, but 30 years later, it seems that smoke still rises...

Hi galleyette, Can you do a mock up out of cardboard of the dimensions of the hood you are most interested in? We found this very helpful when we were trying to decide on the dimensions of a hood to buy. We installed our first-ever venting wall hood a few months ago (36" wide, 24" deep Best by Broan K42 chimney hood). I'm five feet, eight inches tall and almost six feet when I cook in heels. I was very afraid I'd bump my head. But I don't even come close; it just isn't an issue. (Something about the way one bends slightly forward when cooking.) The hood is mounted 33" above our cooktop and could have been mounted 36" (according to Best by Broan specs) if we had wished. We also considered the pull out vent hoods but decided we wanted the "capture area" of a standard 24" deep hood. Having a powerful hood with a good capture area has transformed how I cook. I would trade it for an upper cabinet any day. If you go a little more powerful on your cfms and make sure you have a good capture area, you should be able to compensate for mounting the hood a little higher for head clearance. Having the lights in the hood has also been a huge unexpected plus for cooking.

Galleyette, since your family is so tall, are you planning on higher countertops, with upper cabs whose bottom is also higher than usual? This will affect the positioning of the hood also.

Those slide out hoods have the blower located in the cabinet above. I don't think this concept will save you much storage space.

Warmfridge, that's an excellent point! We discussed higher counters at some stage of the process and were afraid of the implications for resale. The top of the counters is currently about 36.5'' above the floor, which I guess is a little higher than the norm already. Is there a magic height that would qualify as higher than normal, but still fall in the realm of something that made sense for cooks of average height?

It's one thing to get a step stool to fetch a platter out of 39'' upper cabs. It's something else altogether to have to get it to chop celery!

There isn't much out there that goes down, so up is likely to be your requirement. If you want to, line the bottom of your cabinet with a custom sheetmetal "hood" and put a mother of a remote blower on the back wall, 1400cmf should do. You will have a much better result than the stove you have now, and a full cabinet above, less the angle duct going down. Make sure the cabinets are conversion varnish finish - you'll need it.

Here is a link that might be useful: Omega Cabinets

My ModernAire under cabinet hood vents straight out the back. My previous MA hood did too. Works great!

The big point for you will be to choose something with a fairly low profile so you have the greatest amount of cabinet space above.

I'm not sure how tall Trailrunner's hood is. It looks like it vents through the wall since there's nothing above it. It's a hoodliner with a surround, and you can see it's pretty shallow.

It definitely can be done. Especially since your household is tall enough to reach.

Galleyette, thank you for the compliment about my kitchen. We are almost finished (waiting for the undercabinet lights). We love how simple and functional our kitchen is.

I will have to ask my contractor how he mounted the hood but it is definitely vented out the back. I believe it is mounted into the studs. The bottom of the hood is 27" off the top of the range. My DH is 6' 5" and does not hit his head on the hood or find it difficult to use the stovetop (he is particularly good at heating taco shells)-- LOL!! He does use the range for more than that but ... I have attached a link to the KOBE web site that shows the hood has rear ducting. BTW my stainless backsplash is not from KOBE. It was a reuse from my previous kitchen that we got from a local fabricator.

Here is a link that might be useful: KOBE CH-179

I was worried about this too for our kitchen. It is not very big and I wanted to squeeze out every inch of storage space but I really loved the contemporary look of the zephyr stainless hoods without cabinetry. I batted the idea back and forth and finally went with the stainless hood, no cabinetry. It was the best thing to do I later realized because a cabinet hood would have given me a little more storage but the stainless hood really stands out as a focal point. Plus without that empty space around the hood the kitchen would have seemed very boxy and closed it. The cabinet above the hood doesn't give you that much cabinet space and in the end, I'm glad I forgo the little extra bit of space and went with the hood I did.

As for those open, no upper cabs kitchens, all I can say is where do you put all the things that aren't pretty? The dishes and glasses are fine on display, but what about all the boxes of pasta and beans and half eaten bags of chips and cans of who knows what? I suppose it could go in under the counter storage, but I'd rather not bend or kneel that much. I could not stand having to transfer every last one of my kids snacks and food items to cannisters. Too much work, and I would hate looking at the boxes and plastic wrappers. I think this works if you have a huge pantry attached to the kitchen and don't mind walking back and forth every time you need something.

I think the desire to do that look is partly economy driven. Cabinets are super expensive and everyone's looking for ways to cut back. I have a new bathroom renovation and I thought of cutting out some of my uppers to store towels and jars of bathsalts on open shelves, but I didn't want to spend time precision folding towels and knew looking at sloppy ones would drive me crazy so I just opted to blow the extra bucks and get the uppers.

When I did my kitchen I got some airiness by varying the depths of my upper cabinets, using glass front cabinets where possible, and keeping the colors light, but I could not forfeit the uppers entirely.

I put in a pantry closet (made from drywall not cabinets) instead of cabinets on one kitchen wall to reduce the upper cabinets in the rest of the kitchen. Cheaper and in my opinion, way more versatile. It is 7.5 feet wide by 2 feet deep. The shelves are 14" deep. I keep all my food in their as well as my small electric appliances and some of my cookware, equipment (salad spinner, etc.), and serving pieces.

We are putting in a Broan Elite and have to vent upwards. Cabinet builder says that there is room in the cupboard above it for a wooden modesty panel in front of the upward vent, so that we can still put in some glass panels and use the cupboard for display. Our glass is partly obscure, so I think this works.

Thanks to all the pros who suggested a cardboard mock-up!

DH and I spent a romantic Valentine's Day hacking a neighbor's cast off Heineken beer case into a pseudo range hood and duct taping it over the stove!

I managed to find a post of Buehl's with a formula for ideal counter height. We'll have to settle on something that maximizes the height of the base cabs for dishwashing and prep, allows us tall uppers that we don't have to stand on tiptoe to reach, still preserves 18" for a backsplash, fits magically into an overall ceiling height of 100''(who needs crown moulding anyway?),as we make sure all the while that we're not blinded by the corners of the hood!

But the good news is that it all does seem do-able.

The bad news is that the Olympics are in full swing and DH is next door working on emptying another Heineken box...

I'm in your exact situation: cabs over my hood, hood on an exterior wall, galley kitchen needing every possible cabinet.

Every hood company I've looked at does rear venting: Kobe, Vent-A-Hood, Independent, Prestige, and Modern-Aire. Plus, these are all the better end of the hood spectrum for serious ventilation. So you should have no problem using the cabs over your hood!

If you're worried about losing and eye, the slideout hoods will slide back in when you bonk into them...

:)

Galleyette,

I'm remodeling my kitchen to accommodate a back injury, and I've been using a cutting board on top of a stack of assorted cookbooks to help determine the optimum counter height. This little experiment has actually been pretty helpful...you might want to play around with this.

Warmfridge,

The formula Buehl outlined is based on standing with arm bent 90 degrees at the elbow, and having someone lend a hand measuring the distance from the elbow to the floor. Whatever that magic number is, subtract 6'', and arrive at optimal counter height.

DH and I are both orangutangs, and came up with 40'' and 39'', respectively. When it comes to resale, I'm thinking that 38'' might be not too far out of the question.

Raising the lower cabs ends up moving the uppers further up the wall (funny how that works!). At some point you have to fudge a little to keep everything reasonable. I think your idea about experimenting with different levels for the cutting board is brilliant.

I read something on GW the other day about sink depth contributing to backache. I have to admit, that's something I hadn't considered.

38" is still in the range of "normal". Much higher and they label it a tall people's house. I'm normal tall, not tall tall, and I got 38" on my island.

Galleyette, if you're going to be living there a good while, since it sounds like you're tall tall, you might consider doing a 40" prep area perhaps an island, window area or other place with no uppers, so you can just enjoy it and save your backs. Either that or get a good sized butcher block board or something similar to raise your work height. The difference for me between 36" and 38" is huge.

If you have a gas range, do not go with down draft (or the pop-up). The horizontal air motion distorts the flame. I am looking at slideout models since I do not use a vent that often. I understand that the building codes require the vent to be at least 30" above the range top. That is really cutting into my need for upper cabinet storage as well.

We will be getting a stand-alone range hood when we redo our small kitchen and buy the Bertazzoni gas range. I've
grown totally displeased with any kind of food storage above a cooktop/oven because of the moth/meal worm problems when you try to store things there. And with our kitchen having only short amounts of walls, I would be much better off with having open shelves along the walls adjacent to the stove anyway. Across the room where the sink is, we'll add a garden window there, and a nice olf fashioned plate rack over the dishwasher. Even though we are taking in our 7x14' backporch as part of the kitchen, the upper portion there will remain as window panels. This will be a mostly bottom base cabinet kitchen, and mostly have drawers.

To gain more space, we are building a window seat under the pair of dining room windows, and opening the wall between the two rooms to make at least a 4' wide passageway. At either end of the windowseat (also used for additional dining seating), I will place the 24x88"" rollout pantry and the 24x88"" tall cabinet w/5 drawers etc from IKEA. The pricing on those two units together are less than the metal insert alone, from another pantry rollout manufacturer. This will give us more than enough storage to compensate for lack of wall cabs. I plan to put most of my dishes in the drawers with the proper hardware inserts that IKEA makes for storing everything.

I'm looking forward to buying these two items soon even before we begin work on the kitchen remodel. There are a few individual pieces of furniture in use on a HAVE TO DO SOMETHING basis, and they will be cleared away. That has to be a good thing.

If you want to see the two tall cabs I mention, look at the IKEA 2010 Kitchen catalog on p. 78 and 79.

I have the same Kobe hood, and like it a lot. We didn't put cabinets above it - I liked the look of the chimney going up the wall and we tiled the wall behind the range and above the hood with the same slate.

It's lucky we didn't have cabinets above because we have twice lowered the hood. It's at 27" now (over a Bluestar rangetop) and that's about right, although it could probably be a little lower and work better.

I'm 6'3", the other cook is 6'. I can still see the back burners no problem.

Moccasin - I'm not sure what the rollout pantry is, but we have two of the 15" wide 88" tall with the pull-out drawers and those have 3/4 of the dry/canned food (including the dog food) in our kitchen. 24", you should have room to spare.
All the dishes are in upper cabs, 36" drawers in lower cabs are pots/pans/lids/plastics. Going with drawers for almost everything was one of the best choices we made.

Oh, Mondragon, this is just want I am wondering about!! I am considering the same hood to be used over a 36" Wolf All Gas, and we have no upper cabinets. Is there any chance you could take a pic for me?? I have been dying to see a pic of it used as a chimney. But I'm also wondering, did you rear vent? If it can vent directly out from the hood for rear venting, I don't understand why Kobe says for wall mount, rear venting you MUST use the duct cover on top...? confused!!