We recently bought a house with an older Amana downdraft gas range. After cooking on electric coil then electric glass top for the last 11 years I was excited to have gas... until I cooked on it. For an old piece of junk range, the downdraft was remarkably strong. Therein was the problem: the downdraft sucks the flames inward so cooking was horribly uneven. I really wanted to go induction but there wasn't room to do an induction range plus pop up downdraft and the cost of relocating an oven to a wall and doing an induction cooktop and pop up vent was cost prohibitive, so instead we bought a new gas range and are installing (in the coming weeks!) an overhead island vent, since our range is on a peninsula. Sorry this got so long, but I have strong feelings about the darn gas downdraft after being stuck with it for the last 6 months. Funny PS - we got our new range Thursday, ahead of doing our countertops early next month. It can't be installed right away due to an issue with the location of the gas outlet thingy and also the existing counters are in the way by about 1/4 inch. I'm happy cooking with a two burner hot plate, a toaster oven and a 12 year old convection oven combo microwave. That's how much I loathe the gas downdraft.

I too have been interested in the Legacy had have had a hard time learning much about it. One thing I did was to read the British reviews for the Rangemaster 90, which is name that the Legacy is sold under in the UK. Most of the reviews were fairly positive, but not very detailed. I also do not know to what extent the range is modified for the American market. Does anyone know? holligator - that's disturbing about the time it takes your ovens to heat up. I wonder if others have that same problem. Have you had yours serviced yet? Here's a post that was over on the appliance forum in a thread on the CornuFe: Posted by carbiznh (My Page) on Fri, May 2, 08 at 11:38 Carolinej- I sell both the LaCornue CornuFe ranges and the Aga Legacy ranges. Metalmorphing is correct in saying that the CornuFe does use the Legacy 44 chassis, however, that is where the similarities end. The CornuFe 110 range has a reinforced chassis from the factory for a higher quality and more rugged end result. There are other differences: the Legacy uses rubber oven gaskets that do not hold up well to use where as the CornuFe uses the usual gasket material that can handle much usage. You will also see that the Legacy has 4 doors on the front which have a flimsy feel to them, the CornuFe has a two door front door system that has doors which are bold and rugged. The Legacy comes with an enameled cooked surface which is hard to clean while the CornuFe has a stainless cooktop which greatly reduces and simplifies cleaning. The CornuFe also comes with a wonderful to use 5 burner cooktop with plenty of room on the center burner for large coooking vessel usage. The un-cramped cooktop is also very handy while using multiple burners, it is much easier to 'move around' on the surface. There are other differences which you will see when you see them side by side. So, it is correct that they are assembled in the AGA factory, but LaCornue owns a dedicated assembly line in the AGA factory just for the CornuFe. The typical American range in this size category has one 'full size' oven and one small oven. The nice thing about the CornuFe is that you get two good size ovens to work with . There are times when you would like to cook to larger dishes at the same time and are unable to accomplish this in the small oven featured on 48" ranges. We sell many of the CornuFe ranges and have not had one complaint regarding the burner BTU's so I think you would find them to work great.

In order to get UL and similar entity approval, the manufacturer has to establish installation instructions that account for whatever worst case scenario UL etc. specifies. Proximity to wood cabinet walls is one limit; another is distance to a shelf or other wood panel below the unit. Spacing will depend on wording, that is, whether the one-inch is measured from the cut-out size, the glass cooktop size, or the actual dimensions of the housing that hangs from the cooktop. In any case, one inch plus three-quarters inch is a total width increase of three and one-half inches more than whatever part of the unit the gap is measured against. To answer the question, my 36-inch Kenmore Elite (Electrolux Icon clone) sits in a cabinet that is 42 inches wide, outside dimension. I can't recall whether I defined this size based on the induction cooktop's installation rules, or by one of the many other factors that affected the kitchen design, such as preplanned ease of repair, or door width for pull out wire shelving. For stone countertops, it is also worth considering early whether your design will lead to significant weight (including filled pots or leaning guests) being borne on relatively narrow pieces of stone countertop that might need supplementary support underneath. I guess we should include bearing some of the weight of the person who has to clean inside the hood now and then. kas

There is a lot here to address, and much of it has been addressed in other threads. Here are a few thoughts. Required air flow rate is a function of the hood capture aperture, and not height, except insofar as increased height for the same capture of the rising, expanding cooking plumes requires more aperture area, and hence more air flow rate. The higher a 36-inch hood is over a 36-inch cooktop, the more expanding effluent will be missed from being captured. Better is a 42-inch hood. And one shouldn't forget that front-to-back aperture size is also important in overlapping the plumes. The real goal is to capture plumes expanding from the hot pan bases at a nominal 10-degrees from vertical. Front-to-back depth of commercial hoods is larger than most residential hoods because the commercial hoods are typically set at seven feet above the floor (48 inches above the cooktop). Once the aperture is settled, then the flow rate should be of the order of 90 CFM per square foot of aperture. This yields a blower induced air velocity of about half the maximum plume velocity. This seems to be sufficient for good containment of the captured plume (no plume reflects back out of the hood). To get a flow rate of the product of 90 CFM/sq.ft. and the number of square feet, a blower that is rated at a larger value is necessary. I recommend a factor of 1.5X. More refined analysis is possible if one knows all of the relevant parameters. Using an exterior blower will be quieter, and this will allow addition of a silencer to suppress the blower blade tip turbulence noise (if there is room in the duct path. This leaves baffle edge turbulence noise as the remaining dominant noise, and at an actual 90 CFM/sq.ft., is quiet enough for most. Draw a stick figure side view of the cook (and spouse) and determine for a given hood front-to-back size what height is needed for head clearance. Note that the cook bends at the waist to reach the farther pots and pans, and hence may have more clearance than body height would suggest. I am presently 5'10" and have my hood at 34 inches above the cooktop. There is clearance when I lean under the hood. I will leave brand suggestions to others, but suggest that hoods that vaguely resemble commercial hoods (at least internally) should be more efficient than those that are significantly different, otherwise restaurants would adopt the different design. I have a Wolf Pro Island hood sufficiently long to overlap both a 36-inch induction cooktop and an induction wok hob. This hood is ducted to a roof blower (Wolf/Broan) rated at 1500 CFM and likely pulling (with reasonable MUA) around 900 CFM through the hood's ten square feet of aperture. The in-line Fantech silencer reduces the blower noise such that at full flow, conversation without raising one's voice can be carried on, both at the cook's side of the hood and across under the hood to the other side of the peninsula. kas