Moraflauta: For the Broan MUA systems, have a look at these links: http://ths.gardenweb.com/forums/load/appl/msg010822599493.html?6 http://ths.gardenweb.com/forums/load/appl/msg0313214523464.html?40 The second link is titled "Braun" but they meant "Broan." For finding contractors, I'd start with my local government's building department/code enforcers and find out if they've ever inspected any kitchen hood MUA systems -- if so, ask who did the work. Also, I would try calling any local retailers who sell higher-capacity range hoods (if anybody local sells them). Also, there have been discussions here at GW where folks have owned-up to using exterior-venting 400 cfm OTRs with pro-style ranges. Heck, if your stove is against an exterior wall, you could even vent the existing OTR and work with that for a while. Almost any overhead vent-set-up will do a better job than the downdraft and recirculating vents you now have. A 400 CFM hood would be better, even if not as good as the venting could be. We have to work within our budgetary, spatial and architectural constraints, Wekick: Specifically I would love it to go low enough to -hold an 8 qt pot of mashed potatoes in enameled cast iron. Can you do that with your Wolf range? I've done that with induction but very low gas flames seem a little too concentrated to evenly heat the cast iron base on my LC enameled CI when I've got mashed potatoes in them. Of course, the burners will do the stupid melt-chocolate-on-a-paper-plate trick and I haven't needed a double boiler for years even with my previous GE DF range. Holding mashed potatoes on a gas stove-top is the one task for which I've needed a dispersion plate/disk/flame tamer. Todd or any of you folks with a BS or AR have any better luck with the star-shaped open burners on your ranges? Maybe I just don't put enough butter and cream in my mashed potatoes? ;>) This post was edited by JWVideo on Tue, Feb 4, 14 at 16:23

The reason you are getting conflicting advice is because of your 10" duct. Your builder recommends the Wolf line because the 1200 CFM and 1500 CFM blowers connect to 10" duct. However, this will be noisier than the Vent-A-Hood when connected to 10" duct. Therefore; your salesperson, who appears to have been listening to you, is aware of the noise factor in your situation and recommends a 900 CFM hood. Vent-A-Hoods are very quiet but 900 CFM is not enough to ventilate a range with a griddle and a grill. They'll both perform okay, but you may not like the noise from the Wolf and probably won't like the power of the Vent-A-Hood. Your situation requires adequate ventilation and quietness. A different Vent-A-Hood, with a 1200 CFM rating instead of 900, would do both, but you will need to change out to a 12 inch duct. The size of the duct is a determining factor in overall noise of a hood. Larger is always quieter and the extra 2 inches decreases noise by about 30%. Your builder does not want to redo this and the salesperson is selling to what is already there. There could be an X factor. The Vent-A-Hood, although you won't have to clean it often, requires you to reach up into the shell and detached the box around the motors for cleaning. Not knowing your health or what you look like I don't know if this is practical or not. Your builder may know this and recommends the Wolf for that reason. But, your 6-3 husband can certainly do this task then. IMO, when comparing these two lines, go with a 1200 CFM Vent-A-Hood, utilizing 12 inch duct.

Gary I think I once had an electric "stove" with a burner like that "sealed electric burner" for awhile. Agree that induction can provide a great range of heat and generally even heat unless there is an issue with the pan. For gas though, there seem to be features attributed to "open" in the open/sealed debate that are really due to other factors. There are several components of cooking that can contribute to a cooking surface that applies heat evenly to your food. You could look at the configuration of the burner ports. Open, sealed or semi open as in the old Wolf burner, there are attempts to make a better pattern of distribution by increasing the number of ports and spreading them out in concentric ports and putting them in a star shape. The most advantage would be for a pan that does not conduct heat well, like cast iron or a very thin pan. They must be sized to the burner though, as you size a pan to an electric burner. The second aspect is considering the size of the pan in relation to the heat pattern of the burner. Once you have a pan, like cast iron, that is bigger than the burner,even though the heat is distributed evenly over a 6 inch circle, you have a hot spot in the middle of the pan. I use 14 inch pans quite a bit and so with my 14 inch CI pan I am better off with a larger ring of heat that would cut the total area of the pan roughly in half unless I could find a star burner 12 inches wide. The flip side is a burner that is too wide for the pan. You then have the heat going either to the very outside or completely around the pan. An open burner on the highest setting will produce a flare but the extent to which this happens depends on how the burner is engineered. Here is a picture of the 30 inch Wolf cooktop compared to 30 inch BS and even when you consider the flare really only on the highest burner setting, the burner is much smaller to begin with so might accommodate a smaller pan easier than the BS. People on this forum tend to focus on the heat source because it is an appliance forum not a cooking forum. To get the most even heat in many more situations, don't worry about the burner but the interface of the food to the burner--the pan. Use a good heavy copper pan and not only will heat be even across the bottom but even up the sides as well. Heat will be coming evenly from all directions. If you can't swing copper use heavy aluminum. Last week, I did use a commercial range with star burners, (with almost no void of burner ports in the middle) with a cast iron pan. It was well sized to the burner so heated well. It had a very poor low end of heat but I'm sure I could work around that if I had to. I have cooked on other commercial ranges as well. I still do like my sealed burners for home due to the great control of the flame especially the low end. I can certainly see people making other choices though. I am currently using my range but due to the issues with the "blue chips" I will at some point replace it. I may have to reconfigure my kitchen to accommodate a rangetop and I am not sure what that will be. Maybe I will get a CVAP for the oven. They are supposed to be coming out with a residential version.

You want to include the entire dining room wall as part of the closet. Nothing looks weirder than a funky bump out. With two standard 48" bifold doors--something you can do because you don't actually need to attach a bifold door to a vertical stud on the right side (when looking at the closet), so you can place the opening flush against the exterior wall--you will have an impressive and VERY functional eight feet of clear laundry room space with the doors open! You will need to make the right side of the wall narrower than the standard 2x4 because otherwise you only have 95.5". The 2x2 (with one strategic 2x4 turned flat) gets you a happy 97.2", giving you a whopping inch and a half to spare. (Standard doors are much cheaper than special order. Plus big closets are good.) Needless to say, you can't put a door casing on this closet. It will need to be finished sheet rock. That is a normal finishing technique for bifold doors, though. But wait! You say. What about the air return? Never thought you would ask, my friend! The air return gets removed from where it is and a little bit of extra duct is added to redirect it to the side wall of the new closet. Which is a thousand time better of a place for it! The duct gets boxed in and painted. Be a princess and make them use 1/2" plywood, which they can mud over and paint. It will look just like if they drywalled it, but it will mean that you will only lose 2.5" of the lower left corner of the closet (if the return is a standard 4" in depth, which is should be sine you can make it as wide across the side wall as you need to) instead of 4" This is because the front corner of the closet is the 2x4 turned sideways. Then the 2" of the depth of the 2x4 plus the inner drywall plus 2" more of your actual closet space is taken up by the duct. Then there is the half inch of plywood. Only one inch will even stick out into the clear area of the eight foot door. If all that is confusing...it'll look good. Lol. Anyway, you will want to put the dryer on the right, on the exterior wall, and vent it straight out. You can't put it all the way against the wall with no because the bifold door would block it slightly. You will have to leave about two and a half inches to get it in (and out for service). The washer should go to the immediate left of the dryer. Then you will have a hair more than thirty inches to the right of the washing machine.