Check capture area front-to-back too. Many of the inserts are less than 20" front-to-back. Ranges are 24" deep or more. Make sure that things on the front burners are covered by the insert. Many people think front-to-back capture area is more important than having the 3" extra on each side that Practigal mentioned. Some kitchens simply cannot fit that extra 6" width for a hood, but do your best to get the front-to-back coverage.

Is the insert using baffle filters or mesh filters? Baffle is preferred.

You mentioned the straight shot of the duct. The duct should be 8". Check that too.

It's more about depth of the hood than the depth of the insert. You will not find an insert that is as deep as the range.

Hvtech42 - you are right. I didn't word my prior post well. I meant that you see some inserts that are so skimpy; smaller than they should be given the size of the hood. And the hood itself should be larger than the 20-inch-deep ones seen commonly because capture area front-to-back is very important.

Thanks for clarifying, hvtech and friedajune. So the cabinet where my hood will be in 24", will that suffice?

If your range is 36" wide then the hood should be 42" wide (36"+3" on two sides.) in an ideal world it would overhang your range by 3" front to back but I think most are only 24" deep.

Yep, 24" is the most common hood depth, and the most common hood width is the same as the range. Ideally as practigal said you would want to overhang a bit more on all sides. This becomes more important in an island application or one where the hood is higher above the burners, but it can never hurt.

I just installed a wall mount 27" deep Windcrest (made in CA.) rated @ 1200cfm 3 speed blower w/10" ducting over my 30" Bluestar range. Amazing performance, blackened fish, bacon, wokking, no fumes or odors leftover. I was getting a lot of effluent leaking from the front of my old Zephyr hood (22' deep under cabinet @600cfm) when using my front 22k burner. This was not an off the shelf unit, it was made to order (handcrafted using top materials, no seams & 5 year warranty). Very clean look and no digital electronics to break down. Took about 4 weeks to manufacture. You can find deeper than 24" just not readily available with all manufacturer's. If you can't go wider (like me) the front to back depth was a more crucial measurement for my blower to do the job. The side to side coverage on the 30" Windcrest covers 2" over the sides of my burners ....Seems like Windcrest is not a widely known brand but definitely a product to be considered as another option....

Sorry to be such a blonde about this, but if I get it wrong, my husband will kill me! Worse yet, he won't let me hear the end of it.

OK, the Internal Blower is a Best by Broan P8 and the Customer Hood Insert is the PIK33 with an 8" duct going straight through the roof.

The HVAC guys placed the 8" duct on Thursday, but I will pay to get it redone if that is right thing to do. All the appliance people, and BlueStar when I called, said this is adequate. Still fretting.

ETA: Or I could go with: CP57IQT3699SB, but that is considerably more expensive and would require a 10" duct.

8" ducting should be fine, pretty standard size. I had to order the parts ahead for my 10" cap & base install on the roof. My installer stocked 8"duct but not 10". I had no 8" option with my hood due to the blower size....

I have the PIK33 with a 1200 CFM external blower on my house. It works fantastic. My only complaint is after years of use I have some grease spots on the siding of my house which I will need to simple green or something before I paint again. Don't get so caught up in the proper hood oversizing. These are guidelines at a rated CFM to give you enough capture area. As long as you pull enough CFM, the capture area on the PIK33 is fine for this stove. I have absolutely no smells from cooking. The capture area is also oversized to prevent people from putting cabinets or flammables right in the flame path of the stove burners. However, I have cabinets at standard height directly on both sides of the PIK33 and haven't had an issue at all. I have the older Bluestar RNB with central charbroiler. Love it!

There's lots of good info here on GW and it helped us with our kitchen remodel. Here's what happened with us:

1. Purchased Bluestar 48 inch rangetop with 48 inch BEST hood (with baffles) and 1200 cfm external BEST blower. (Duct was 10 inch with Fantech silencer)

1. Hood mounted 35 1/2 inches above rangetop and blower on wall with 10 inch ducting

1. During full power front burner cooking - blackening and wok, we smoked up the kitchen every time. Make up air was by opening a window about 6 feet away.

This set up did not work for us. All the equipment performed fine and no issues with quality of products.

For our next house, we did trial mockups of the exiting setup.

Purchased a sheet of 1/2 inch foil lined foam board (4x8) and made hood extensions. We keep trying different sizes around our existing hood until we got one that 100% worked for us.

At our new house:

1. Installed Bluestar 48 inch rangetop with 60 inch Wolf liner (with baffles), and 1500 cfm Wolf external blower. (duct is 10 inch with Fantech silencer).

1. Decorative hood was built around the liner providing 6 inch overlap on each side of rangetop, total depth front to back is 29 inches and hood is mounted 34 1/2 inches above rangetop. Decorative hood is 5 inches below actual liner

1. 10 inch Make Up Air duct with Broan/Best MUA universal damper. MUA grille mounted in ceiling with wall mounted on/off switch.

This new setup (based on our mockup tests) works without any problems and we are 100% satisfied.

Bottom Line:

48 inch rangetop

60 inch wide liner (hood insert)

29 inches deep decorative hood

5 inches decorative drop-down below hood insert liner

10 inch MUA in ceiling with manual wall switch control

We have a smoke detector nearby and have never had it go off doing any grilling, full power cast iron blackening, or full power wok. Highly recommend you go as large as possible if you do lots of heavy smoke/heat cooking. Otherwise a setup like this may be overkill.

Been there - done that :-)

thanks, racmrc. do you have a picture of the current set up?

I have the 42" liner on the 36" stove running the EB12 (1200 cfm) blower. I have the charbroiler and never had a problem grilling the greasiest of things with flames and smoke pumping out. RACMRC, I am curious why the 48" wasn't adequate on the 48" stove. How long was the exhaust run? Mine is short, goes directly up to a 10-inch 90 degree bend, then it exits the side of our house about 10 feet from the stove. My blower is also external, perhaps that made a difference? What is the fan silencer you have? Did you test with and without that on? (I am not a Bluestar rep, just a curious homeowner.) To add, my liner sits about 31" at the lowest point above the stove. Sort of "in my face" but it works well for us.

As far as grilling, (we got the 24 inch center charbroiler/grill), we were actually ok with the first setup. Its when we used the outer burner at full 22k power for blackening and wok that caused the problems.

As some of the more technical folks have often stated on this site, its all about getting the smoke, etc into the hood capture area - that is so true. Anything that got near the hood (first installation) went out with no problems. However, the smoke, etc would rise faster and outward on the outer burners than the hood could pull in. Something that really surprised us was that if you walked in front of the rangetop, between it and the MUA, it disrupted the air flow and more smoke will spill out from the capture area.

Our first configuration had the external blower go straight up about three feet, then 45 degree turn, another eight feet and then another 90 degree for about two feet. It went through the corner of our upstairs bedroom closet and the blower was mounted on the exterior 2nd floor wall. No test was performed without the silencer but we are very satisfied with the low noise levels. In both installations, we could easily carry on conversations near the rangetop, even on full power.

I'm sure others may have different hood configurations they are satisfied with and maybe even with less overhang, that just didn't work for us. Also, the foam board test I did was not perfect since it was basically doing a hood over an existing hood but it did show what could be done to capture all smoke, etc. Definitely not a very accurate test but those results have now paid off for our new kitchen.

With the configuration we have now, we have had it now for a year, use it often and not once have we had any smoke, etc spill out of the hood area. It may not look as nice as some of the fancy smaller hoods but its good for us and works.

Here's a couple pics. Note the ceiling grille on right is the MUA and the wall switch to the right is the MUA on/off switch.

Here we see two important aids to full capture and containment, enough hood aperture and deep upper cabinets providing side-skirt effects as well as cross draft reduction. Good work!

In some cases, MUA insertion can be tricky. In commercial hood measurement labs the air is introduced through entire perforated walls to ensure relatively laminar flow toward the hood. (They also don't usually measure with a cook in the path.) If a problem is observed when MUA is inserted via a ceiling register grill, one thing to try before changing the ceiling and duct run is to replace the grill with a diffuser. Diffusers are like curved Venetian blinds. (See Hart & Cooley links below.) Diffusers can be purchased that throw the air along the ceiling in one, two, three, or four directions as appropriate to allow the air to approach the stove from one or more desired directions. One can aim for spilling the air down around the hood, or aim for an opposite wall to send the air toward the stove by reflection.

HartandCooley_GRD_ResidentialCatalog

HartandCooley_GRD_CommercialCatalog

kas

We have a 36" BS, no griddle and the exact same Best by Broan setup in a 42" hood except that apparently it pulls 900 CFM if you go straight out the wall. I have had no problems searing or frying. I am having problems finding a short neck LED bulb so it sticks out a little but other than that it's been perfect.

ETA we do have MUA as that's code here for over 300 CFM.