All I know about vent hoods is what I learned in buying ours. From what I understand, there are 3 types of blowers -- one in the hood itself, a remote fan that sits on the roof or an inline that goes inside the wall or attic space between your hood and and the exit point. on your roof. I saw inline blowers that needed I think 12 or 14" of space, and I had a little over 10" between the joists. I could not run straight up due to a bathroom, plumbing and the fact that the walls upstairs were not directly over the downstairs wall, so I was limited to the space between my joists and a 10" duct. Trying to buy a hood that doesn't sound like a jet engine taking off (i.e., at their loudest) is very frustrating. It seems no one wants you to hear theirs, and that never seems like a good thing. I was trying to think of a way to describe the sound leve on mine, so I went in the kithen and tried to find something everyone could relate to. On the lowest setting, my hood has about the same volume but a lower pitch than my microwave drawer while heating a cup of water or similar to my oven fan, but again, at a lower pitch. On the highest setting, it's a little louder than my prep sink faucet running water into the open sink drain and quieter than my new KA pro mixer. I am still missing a panel that will sit in front of the duct, so that may have some impact. We had to reorder that piece, so I ought to check it out when it gets replaced. Hope that helps.

I've only ever dealt with powered MUA in commercial applications. In residential, just dampers that are interlocked with the hood. Yes powered ventilation is obviously more effective than passive ventilation, but a simple damper has done the job in any residential application I've ever seen, integrated with the HVAC system if needed. The separate switch would only make sense if you were doing a separate blower which I think is overkill for most residential. As I said before, simple is the key! Simple design, simple to operate, simple to service. Most people just want to be able to turn the fan to a certain speed and get cooking. They don't want to futz around with a bunch of variable speed controls balancing exhaust flow with intake. And I'm never a fan of putting complicated crap like that into a house that only makes sense to the owner. You're going to flummox guests and future owners for no real advantage. Of course, if you are going to connect to the HVAC system, you should have a HVAC person who can deal with that, including automatic blower activation if needed and making sure you're not bringing too much outside air into your return duct. This goes especially if you have gas heat. You do not want to kill your heat exchanger prematurely. Makeup air has been a real problem in the residential appliance biz. Clueless salesmen/kitchen designers spec'ing these gigantic ranges and gigantic accompanying hoods (often that are too powerful for even the gigantic ranges), and they have no idea there could possibly be a consequence. Kudos to Broan for coming up with a prepackaged solution that does not require an engineering degree to understand and use, or any expert for that matter (although as I said above, an HVAC tech's help may be needed for some installs). I guess you could rig up a dedicated blower and resistance heater for the kitchen, but most people I know would rather ditch the prostyle range than cough up the cash to install and operate that. Nobody is "interested" in MUA. It is not a creature comfort. Either you need it or you don't. If you don't, there's no point spending the $$$ for it. This post was edited by hvtech42 on Thu, Jun 26, 14 at 23:45

OK better late than never. I finally got the wolf hood fan and broan 335 They are working as designed. For reference, my Wolf range hood was the pro hood..PW482718 I believe. Inside the hood there was just one electrical wire. This wire connects to the house 120V supply. There are also two regular electrical plugs inside the hood. These electrical plugs are where you plug in the blower (remote or internal) You will need your electrician to run a 3 conductor wire from the blower down to the range hood. Here are the differences between the Broan and Wolf remote blowers: The wolf external blower comes with a power cord that plugs into the plugs in the hood. You then splice this cord together with the cord from the remote blower and hide it in the junction box inside the hood. The broan remote blower does not come with this cord. Fortunately it is just a standard 3 prong plug. Just picture a computer power supply plug, and cut the end that connects into the power supply off. Just make sure it is rated for the amperage of the remote blower. Plug one end of this cord into the outlet inside the range hood, and splice the other end to the wires coming down from the remote blower. On the other hand you can purchase the official wolf cord but it is like $65 That's it, everything works as planned, the blower fan speeds are infinite. Lights, heat lamps, etc all work if wired this way. There may be slight differences cosmetically on the exterior of the blower, but without having both I can't say. All I can say is the broan 335 works with 100% with the wolf pro hood, you just need to supply a power cord.

Broan/NuTone/Best make a large range of ventilation equipments and generally you get what you pay for as far as I can tell. However, why a "high end" appliance dealer wouldn't include some other brands is unclear. At a minimum, I would expect a Wolf dealer to have examples of Wolf hoods. (My hood is a Wolf, made by Independent before Wolf moved production in-house.) Decide how high you want the hood for good site lines and reaching to the back burners, and missing one's head, while keeping in mind that the front burners will be emitting plumes that expand as they rise, so height corresponds to increases in needed overlap -- side to side and front to back. 10 degrees from vertical measured from the flame diameters when pans are on the burners can be used for plume expansion estimation. Sketch it out. Given a height and hence width and depth, calculate the square footage of the entry aperture of the hood. For wall hoods the light bar in the front may qualify as partial or whole entry aperture area. Multiply area by 90 CFM/sq. ft. Multiply by 1.5 if you don't know all the pressure losses. Find a blower that has that result as a rated value. Decide on in-hood, in attic (in line), or on roof. Farther away is generally quieter. If there is room for a silencer (Fantech) between blower and hood then the result will be quieter still. There is a lot of dissension about ease of hood cleaning by type. I can say that my Wolf hood baffle assemblies easily remove and can be cleaned in a dishwasher. (I have ten of these, so it takes two loads.) One still wants to reach up inside and wipe the surfaces. I use Simple Green, but likely there are myriad possible choices. I have never owned a VaH, and was initially repulsed (2007) by the Magic Lung® claims. Others like them. If you have guests sitting where they can see into the hood, a baffle system may be aesthetically superior. Duct should be sized so that full power actual flow rate achieves a velocity in the duct between 1000 and 2000 ft/min for best balance between grease condensation and grease impingement. You can go lower (larger duct) if you pre-heat the duct in cold weather. On CFM focus. Standard (if that actually ever applies) residential hoods are designed to fit into residential kitchens. Commercial hoods are designed to fit into commercial kitchens. At a minimum, the typical difference is two feet of ceiling height. When the commercial hood can be built so that there is tremendous volume below its baffles, there are conditions where the specific flow rate (CFM/sq. ft.) can be reduced below the value I suggested above. This is due to "baffle averaging" resulting from the reservoir volume vs. plume steady state and transient volumetric rates. At the other extreme, residential hoods with little volume below the baffles will allow plume escape (capture failure) if the plumes are not immediately entrained into the baffle flow. And, of course, plumes not initially captured are not contained and removed except as a matter of long term kitchen (and whole house) air replacement. So CFM focus varies. Another difference is that commercial hoods are typically operated at a fixed CFM and the MUA is balanced for this case, whereas residential hoods, along with bathroom fans, etc., operate at variable CFM, and this makes the MUA control more complex.