What one wants is to have the hood aperture size overlap the rising and expanding effluent plume. Aperture in this case refers to the area at the bottom of the hood that can be expected to actually capture effluent. Generally this is the empty space within the interior sides, but in some cases might include some of the edge (with enough flow rate and/or steep enough angle). So, given an area at the cooktop that represents the contour of the bases of all pans that might be employed on the burners/hobs, draw an imaginary line upward from the contour edge expanding out at, say, 10 degrees, to the height of the hood aperture. (This is equivalent to multiplying the hood height by 0.176 or thereabouts, to find the edge of the preferred minimum overhang of the aperture.) Very high hoods need additional overlap beyond this to resist cross drafts from helping the effluent escape. If wood is exposed at the bottom of the insert enclosure, its distance from the cooking surface must comply with the range manufacturer's minimum allowable distance to combustible surfaces. If Rustic-R-Us is intended (cabinet-wise and flame-wise), then maybe cabinets made of woods that smoulder instead of burn might be considered, such as ipe or redwood. kas

For those of you who are still wondering about this - I got confirmation from BlueStar that the interchangeable griddle charbroiler system (BSPICBG12) is officially compatible with all open burner freestanding/rangetop options that are being produced as of July 2021 (i.e. RCS, RNB, and Platinum) and can be ordered with a serial number for any of the aforementioned models. I recently ordered a set for my RCS and hopefully I won't regret having spent almost $1K on it :)

Hi All- Well it has been two years since since we received our BS Platinum (and started this thread) and I would have to say we have a love / hate relationship with it. To summarize... What we like: - The burners work great, love the open burners (although the extra Platinum BTU has no value for us) - The stove looks terrific - The integrated wok feature works well, I love this What we don't like: - The grill/griddle is a useless gimmick in my view (sorry to be so direct), why? Because the heat is inconsistent and the handling / replacement is cumbersome. I see no value in these features better to use an outdoor grill and a $20 Lodge cast iron griddle over the burners which is what this really is - The oven has been a disaster to be honest. We have had 4 service calls, first the retrofit for the defective design which melted an oven rack, then once fixed we have struggled to get the oven to maintain a consistent temperature. Too hot or too cold. For the $8k we paid it is totally ridiculous we had better performance with our cheap GE gas range we had before. Bluestar support has been fine but we are out of warranty now and it seems we may be stuck with owning an overpriced lemon. My wife is a professional chef and the lack of temperature control is making her crazy. In conclusion I would say we love the look and burners and really want this to be our special centerpiece appliance but feel that the oven is mediocre and that we overpaid. If we could do it again we would probably buy an RNB or a dual fuel Wolf for better oven temperature control. Come on Bluestar you can do better than this!

Not sure if you’ve already selected your range hood. I do a lot of Asian wok cooking too, and that’s one of the main reasons we bought BlueStar 36” RNB (just stainless steel) last month. With the appliance store salesperson’s recommendations, we paired it with Best by Broan PK22 insert pro-range hood - 1200cfm on internal blower. It worked fantastic and low noise on low and medium settings, the highest setting is kinda loud but i can live with it as i can still keep the same tv volume in another room. We had our hvac contractor to put in the new 10” duct to the exterior of the house and a makeup air component as part of our county requirement. We did consider Bluestar range hoods to pair with but we didnt see the need to spend that extra $ since we can still achieve great results with this particular Broan hood which is less than half the price of a BS one. For us, the installation costs adds up too, especially we‘ve never had an external duct in the kitchen as we use to have a microwave hood.