I understand what you're going through, as I found it to be a difficult (one of the most) decisions as well. Couple questions for you: If you're doing 30" deep base cabinets, how are you accommodating for the range?? I'm fairly sure that the door has to protrude past the cabinets (fire risk). Which look do you prefer, under-cabinet/canopy or chimney? What's your budget?

I went with baffles, it seems that they perform better and have less of a performance drop due to being dirty when compared to filters. I went with canopy because of the vent run we were doing we had to vent out the back of the appliance to make it work. I went 24" deep to encompass as much surface as possible. We had a budget of about $1500, but I found a new independent hood with 600cfm blower on ebay for $1000 (retail was nearly 5 times that). 600 CFM is the max allowed here without a make up air solution, but I feel it will be enough. We have an RCS 30", but I would've used the same hood with the RNB as well.

Greasy cooking effluent has grease particles of various sizes, called the particle spectrum. Baffles (and whatever alternatives are performing that function) collect part of the spectrum, usually the larger particle size end. The rest of the spectrum is hoped to be blown outdoors without much accumulation in ducts. This requires a sufficient duct velocity, which is determined from the flow rate (CFM) divided by area of the duct cross section (sq.ft.), and should be over 1000 ft/min. For warm ducts, the value can be higher toward 2000 ft/min with some improvement. Note that grease can end up outside your window if the duct is terminated in a way that allows the air to blow back on the building. This is why restaurants use up-blast blowers on their roofs. Higher velocity might also help move the effluent farther from the building outside wall.

So, after determining the actual CFM using the concepts below, pick a duct diameter that is appropriate for achieving the desired flow velocity.

Baffles can be cleaned in dishwashers, but may need some manual intervention if the grease has been cooked on or allowed to dry out over time.

Required CFM is not a function of the number of burners that are on at one time, but of the rising effluent velocity, the hood aperture area, and some effects of the baffle design. I recommend multiplying the hood aperture area (sq. ft.) by 90 ft/min for a nominal actual CFM desirable for high temperature cooking. The actual flow rate of blowers is lower than their CFM rating, which is measured for zero static pressure conditions (that you won't have). It is hard to guess from here what your room pressure will be in your building when pulling the desired CFM. I would go higher on the blower rating by a factor of 1.5; at least 1.2 for just baffles and short duct lengths (implies MUA comes from open windows).

Effluent rising from hot cooking surfaces expands as it rises, thus leading to the rule of thumb that the hood aperture overlap potential hot pan surfaces on any burner by at least three inches on every open side.

kas

What size duct do you think you can put through the window?

With the 30" deep countertops, I think we will put a little bit of countertop behind the range, so the range will come out in front of the cabinets in the usual manner. I have no preference on looks between undercabinet/canopy and chimney.

Trevor, I am not sure how big of a duct we can put through the window, but I figure we can probably panel off as much as we want; the only penalty is that it looks ugly and we lose window light. Actually, there is an existing wall hole down by the floor level which is another possibility (though probably the hole is quite a bit smaller).

kas --- for CFM, it seems like for a 36" wide and 27" deep hood, that's 6.75 square feet so we should aim for 6.75*90*1.5 = 911 CFM? That's a serious blower, then, not messing around. :)

Does anybody have an opinion on the filterless designs?

if i was looking at this i would recommend a 8" duct.

It was $1000, but came with 600 cfm blower. It's an independent/prizer connoisseur.

A 27'' depth is for a range in a standard installation. With additional depth cabinets, the hood has to move forward to cover the burners adequately. That means a custom hood, or a custom stainless spacer at the rear of a standard hood.

Most of this is speculative until you find out 100% what your building will actually allow to happen. That is the basis for all future decisions, including the firepower of the stove. You're not really able to plan anything until you have that information. If your building won't allow a vent pipe through a window (likely) then putting a firebeast into your kitchen may not be such a good decision. It will certainly be exceedingly hard on your AC on a hot August day, and so will the unexpelled grease and steam be hard on your cabinets and furnishings.

Having lived in a similar size NY kitchen, also in a 1929 building, for 30 years -- with a much wider aisle and open to the dining room with 3 windows-- I absolutely agree with Sophie.

There is no crossvent -- the heat from that oven will be oppressive as it's trapped in that small space. No building will let you vent into a chimney which doesn't appear to be nearby anyway. If the window faces the street, game over. If it faces other buildings or into an ell the board will decide based on what others have done. But there's still a duct with two turns to the window.

Is the AC also meant to be installed in the window?

A few years ago someone here installed a Best by Broan hood over a BS in a west side apartment. I believe it's a recirculating hood. She thought it was ok.

I recognize this is not what you want to hear if you're going for Blue Star but I personally would switch out the stove. I had a Berta with a much smaller oven and less power and it heated up the entire place even in May. Can't see using the oven at all in that space between May and September. And there is vent noise as well depending on choice.

Before I made a decision I'd be sure to read the install instructions and the user manual for any serious candidate. I'd want to have an idea of the noise factor and also would go look at the baffle style in person.

Hi Sophie, rococogurl,

Thanks for the feedback! That's really good to hear. I just want to understand a little better what you mean.

We did decide to do a 30" BlueStar, not the 36" one. For a BlueStar 30" range, is baking in the oven going to be any hotter than baking in a normal range's oven? I thought the oven would be all the same. Are you saying that the BlueStar oven is poorly insulated and leaks more heat or something?

As for the burners, I definitely agree that a good vent hood is really important. I'm currently in a windowless kitchen with a recirculating microwave, and it is pretty miserable. That said, 22K BTUs is only 30% more than the 17K BTU "ultra power burner" on the non-prostyle kitchenaid in my current kitchen. I would not be searing/stirfrying on more than one burner at a time, so my hope was that a decent vent hood would take care of a single searing/stirfrying situation even if the duct situation is not perfect.

Another idea would be to downgrade the stove to a BlueStar RCS model with 15K BTU burners (instead of the RNB model with 22K burners); it's unclear to me though whether that would actually reduce the ventilation requirements?

Thanks,
Daniel

A 36 by 27 inch hood description typically defines the outer dimensions. By aperture I meant the inner opening. While commercial hoods have relatively narrow sides, residential hoods have rolled edges, lamp space, control space, and perhaps other obstructions under the hood. So the actual aperture may be somewhat less than 6.75 square feet, somewhat reducing the suggested flow rate.

Other comments above are well founded. The ventilation system is a system, and it lives in a bigger system that is the stove and building and people having control over the building and to some degree over your life. All relevant aspects (requirements) of the greater and lesser systems need to be accounted for in choosing the parts that make up the lesser system.

kas

Insulation in a range means that just ''leaks'' heat more slowly into the room. All of the heat that you produce by cooking will end up in the room eventually. That's physics. Unless you are able to duct some of that heat externally. Which you do not know if you will be allowed to do.

You're putting the cart before the horse. Physical restraints to the design HAVE to be considered first, before the design begins or the first component is chosen. You have to know about the venting issue, the gas pressure available, and how adequate your electrical service may be for a modern kitchen. If you can't vent externally, are you OK with sweltering with all of that heat trapped in your home? Does your gas pressure even support the choice of high BTU range? Will you need to ugrade your electrical panel in order to have the now required two 20 amp small appliance circuits? Will the building allow any of this?

Planning a remodel doesn't begin by dreaming about wokking up a stir fry to impress your friends. It begins by investigating the nuts and bolts of the existing space, and the requrements that both your building and your city may have in order to be approved for your needed permits and inspections.

If I wanted to do what you want to do in a prewar building I would ask if anyone else on your line has remodeled their kitchen and, if so, I would go to see each one and speak to the owners.

Those people will know about the gas on that line and whether or not they had to bring in additional electrical service. They also will have -- or won't have -- hoods that vent out or recirculate. If no one has a hood that vents out, you will find out why. If they do, you will find out how they did it and what they used. You can hear the hoods as well. You can see which ranges the neighbors used (which can affect resale value if that's important). But most important you will see what happened to the window or whether they were allowed to vent through the exterior wall (which I doubt).

Changing all those things, including the size of a window, can be tricky -- or not. It depends.

If you've read past threads on Blue Star you will know that most love the power of the open burners on top and the even cooking. But that there have been igniter issues and serious issues with doors and heat that have been going on for years. There have been major issues with service. OTOH, some have luck with their BS ranges.

No doubt those who sell them will tell you it's OK and others have done it. That may well be true. And perhaps that's what you will do as well. But expecting to be able to stir-fry on a 22K burner in a NY apartment doesn't strike me as realistic. I mean seriously, just go to Red Farm. Even with a 600 cfm hood that vents outside, the heat from a 30" range will be intense in that space. I certainly wouldn't go larger. And with a powerful hood, where does the make up air come from in that semi-enclosed space?

Once it's determined what can/cannot happen with the hood venting, the choices may change. I wouldn't lock in my thinking or purchase anything until I knew what others had done and what will be approved both by the building and the city.

The hood has to vent through the window? Is the range below a window, that may not be to code if it's a gas range.