We have a Vent-A-Hood and it is pretty quiet. 48inch 1200 cfm. We had a Wolf hood in our previous house and that thing was like a freight train.

Thanks. Does the ventahood have an internal blower?

Yes it is an internal blower.

There are fans of Vent-A-Hood but most people on these forums say they are very hard to clean. The "Magic Lung" blower blows grease up into a squirrel cage, and the grease hits and clings to the fan. I'm looking elsewhere as far as brands.

Noise depends on a lot of factors. Baffles are quieter than mesh. Inline or exterior blowers are quieter than internal. Yes, you will get a quieter hood even if the duct is only 6 feet by mounting inline or exterior. It just depends on how much work you want to go to for the hood. A lot of brands are actually known for being pretty loud. Once you get into the more expensive hoods, and we are talking $3K or more, they seem to get better reviews for quietness. Again, location of the blower itself makes the biggest difference as well as the CFM. It's the rush of air that makes the noise for the most part.

Look at GE Monogram. We are pretty close to ordering one of these, and they have some great styles with a pretty good reputation for quality and low noise. Oddly enough, they don't list a sones rating for their hoods officially, but reviewers tend to agree the hoods are on the quiet side.

Thanks for that info. I will check out GE Monogram. It's possible to use an exterior fan on the side porch wall. I initially planned to use all FanTech components including the exterior blower, silencer, and insert, but the insert (HL42) was only 18" deep. Does anyone know of a deeper insert that would work with the FanTech external blower?

I know that ModernAire uses Fantech blowers so their hoods and inserts would be likely compatible, but the hoods are mostly custom and run in the $3K and up range. If you can actually do an exterior motor, go for it. Those will be by far the quietest and every reviewer I've seen who has one loved it. On the inserts, I am not sure what to tell you as I've been looking for a different type of system for my own kitchen.

@Allan I just found the best article on hoods. Angle of those baffles in the insert is important. This thread gives brand recommendations, too. Be sure to read the comments section as the original poster continues the discussion in the comments: https://www.gardenweb.com/discussions/5161173/hood-faq

Regarding Monogram hoods - I had one in my previous home. Now, we didn't have a remote blower (wish we did on that hood), and it was fairly loud. We were underwhelmed by its abililty to capture the plume. Also, while the baffles were at the rear and angled as seen in that CaptiveAir diagram of the Hood-faq thread, every couple of years we had to scrape grease off the blower fins (you would hear a "wobble" drone on low speed when they gummed up), so I would say the baffles weren't properly designed to capture grease.

@Michelle that's interesting, thanks. I was looking at a Monogram hood with a max of 350 CFM that has mesh filters, and reviewers consistently state that it is quiet. I imagine your hood was a higher CFM rating since it had baffles. The higher CFM speeds are naturally louder. Also, I've seen some of the newer Monogram designs with pretty sharp angles to the baffles to promote grease capture and draining, so maybe yours was an older design and not so slanted? Mesh filters can be put in the dishwasher and according to some reviewers catch more grease than baffles. Hard to know because other reviewers say the baffles collect more grease. Very confusing.

I had also been looking at Wolf vent hoods, but do you know that so many reviewers are saying the quality has gone down with Wolf and lots of people are having to replace plastic knobs that are breaking off? Manufacturing for Wolf is rumored to be in China now. Seems so hard to find a good product. Wolf was on my short list because you could get a code-compliant 300 CFM blower installed that didn't require make up air, but I don't want to start replacing things on such an expensive hood right off the bat, so they are out.

Please, read the hood threads here. Start with the real functional requirements (e.g. hood coverage and air flow rate) and let them take you to the components that meet them, not the other way around.

I had a Wolf hood in previous house. It was installed around 2002. That thing was so loud and it had a remote blower. It vented out the back of the wall so the blower was on the side of the house. It did a decent job but a few years in the low speed stopped working. We never bothered to have someone come out and fix it. We just used medium and high speeds. But as I said it was so loud that we hated using it. I do not know what todays Wolf hoods are like.

I've read many threads here, now including the incredibly detailed one linked by Inspo. That thread is fairly discouraging bc it makes it seem like I need something that doesn't exist, which is a residential hood liner that has enough open aperture/containment area to allow the fan time to exhaust bursts of effluent. I'm 6'3" so that adds to the issue if I don't want to be bumping my head. I think the rest of the system will be fine (Fantech wall mounted exterior fan, cfm tbd, silencer, 7-8 ft of 10" duct) but the hood is stumping me. especially if i want 27" depth.

I have a Vent-A-Hood and have no issues cleaning it -- it's easy. Just remove the "squirrel cage" (loosen the hand-tightened screws) and either put it in the DW or clean it by hand. I clean it by hand and find it very easy.

As with any hood, you have to keep up with it. How often you clean it depends on how you cook.

It's also quieter than our old, builder-grade hood even though it's much more powerful. However, it does not have a remote blower.

@Buehl I think the complaints from others have been that the grease eventually gets on the fan itself and is hard to clean. Some even say the smell never goes away because they can't get to all the grease. Could be that they have high-grease cooking habits while yours are more moderate so not as much grease is collecting on the fan itself?

By the way, SW has had another stroke as of November 2018 and isn't even functional to comment on the dedicated Facebook page set up by The Cook's Kitchen, "Aunt Sophie's Corner." SW's home is being sold for a move closer to doctors in a larger city. Very sad. Hopefully there will be some health improvement, but it's doubtful to see a return here at H.

Looks like there are a couple of 24" deep options with Prizer and Abbaka. I am unclear on whether they can control a Fantech remote blower though and how that would be accomplished. If I understand correctly, it would be better to have a deeper hood than higher cfm, but 27" deep is eluding me...

@Allan I feel the same way about that Hood Vent FAQ thread. They are suggesting you need a commercial vent in your house in order to be effective. Unless you are grilling or frying 10 hours a day like in a restaurant, I think it may be overkill to do that. Those CaptiveAire/Greenheck/Hood Mart systems are several hundred pounds each and aren't pretty for in-home use. A lot of us are going to be doing the really smoky grilling outdoors on an outdoor grill anyway.

If you're looking at a compromise with going with smaller residential Prizer and Abbaka hoods (Prizer just bought Abbaka, by the way), you're going to be spending a lot more money than if you'd bought a commercial hood. I've seen those brands come in around $3K to $4K for the hood alone, but it's worth it to get a real quote if you're that interested. If you already have your blower, you can save a little money by not having to buy the whole system from one of those higher-end companies. You're right about those 27" hoods being elusive in residential offerings. I think the original poster on the FAQ thread was getting a commercial CaptiveAire. That would look something like this over my home oven/range, photo on Twitter, courtesy Lisaard and Innisfree Hospice https://twitter.com/lisaardinnisfre/status/1007249080190423042

I had a 1400 cfm Tradewind liner from 2007-2017. I used to post pics all the time of my DH wok cooking using it and using the adjacent Miele builtin deep fat fryer. I had a 36" Caldera gas cooktop , all of this was under the 54" hood. In the 10 years we used it and used it hard there was never one iota of grease on the wood hood or surrounding open shelves...never once. It is the world's easiest hood to clean as ALL the grease accumulates on the baffles. We almost never used the highest setting which is why we had the extra cfm also we had a long run to the roof mounted blower and we had an inline silencer. We could easily talk while cooking and listen to the radio...yes you could hear the hood but it sure wasn't anything to get upset about as far as noise.

The BIG plus was how clean everything always was after cooking a huge Chinese meal and there were never food odors...except outside of course LOL...our neighbors would hang on the fence to try and get samples !

Sophie used my DH and our ventilation system as her " GO TO" prototype of what it should look like when you are using high heat. We didn't have any MUA. Our house was an 1890 Victorian and the airflow was superb . You can see pics at the link or do a Google search for Trailrunner's kitchen to see more pics.

https://www.google.com/search?q=gardenweb+trailrunner+KAW&tbm=isch&source=iu&ictx=1&fir=t5cG1vpFumDwZM%253A%252CzPMCPVmJNpCg1M%252C_&usg=AI4_-kSPSMFmArPP9mWqP0yMhG4yKe-7bw&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwju4rTP_ePfAhUOm-AKHZgnAhcQ9QEwCXoECAQQDA#imgrc=t5cG1vpFumDwZM:

We are in a new place now and I am planning the kitchen remodel right now. I will have a Bluestar 30" range this go round and will have a Tradewind liner over it. If you have any questions feel free to ask. c

Sorry to go OT, but am so sad to read above Inspo’s update on Sophie Wheeler. I am not on FB So wouldn’t know otherwise. Thank you very much for letting us know. Perhaps a separate post on the Kitchens Forum for the other people who’ve known Sophie via Gardenweb for many years?

Thank you @Sue, I just came across Tradewind this afternoon. It looks like it could be the ticket assuming it will control the remote fan. About the same dimensions as the Prizer I was looking at for less than half the cost.

@M Miller I think the hope is that SW will improve which is entirely possible after a stroke. At this point in time the typing and spelling of words is hard, and the move is surely taking a lot of attention, so you won't see SW online anywhere right now. My guess is that the "Aunt Sophie's Corner" on Facebook will be the only place fans can follow from here on out, though I'm sure all the continued support on these forums is most appreciated. Not sure how much SW wants the health info to be broadcast, so I'm not planning a special post. You can see this same information on other Houzz threads in the comments.

@Wilson853 Those are good points about mounting height. You can officially mount a hood 36" above range (up to 72" above the finished floor) and get it out of the headspace if you are tall and have a deep hood. You did 38.5 above the countertop which is above generally recommended specs, but if the hood is still exhausting well enough for you, then it fits your situation with a tall husband. People can seriously injure themselves on sharp hood corners, so best to get them out of the danger range.

Another option for maximizing the hood aperture advantage is to build out to mount the hood further over the burners or use an island hood over a wall range and mount it directly over the burners. And yes, a larger aperture requires lower CFM to do the same job.

I'm taking a close look at BlueStar hoods right now. They are made by Prizer which also just bought Abbaka, but the BlueStar line appears to be the most affordable among the brands. I think they have some 27" deep options. All three brands seem to get good reviews.

Thank you Sue for posting that review/update!

Our builder's appliance rep spec'd Tradewind for our kitchen. We hadn't heard of the brand before, but in researching it the specs impressed us. I hadn't found anything on Houzz except your original post from several years ago. We will have a 36" rangetop, so we are going with a 1250 CFM insert and a 42" wide hood.

We're a few months from being done, so I don't have feedback on our install yet. We are venting on an outside wall, so a short duct run. We also have an engineered MUA setup since we are building a fairly well-sealed home.

Inspo, thx for the info above. I hadn't seen posts about SW. I hope the best for her. Learned so much, and love that her posts are here for now. I hope she gets the great care she deserves. She is admired far and wide for her expertise and directness. Bless her.

You are welcome, Mrs. S.

@Allan FYI Tradewind and Thermador used to be the same company until Tradewind broke away. The products still look similar. Please be sure to check out BlueStar too as explained above.

I am sorry to learn of Sophie's condition and hope she recovers. I miss her pithy comments here.

I also hope that my referencing the Greenheck guide is not interpreted as a suggestion that most normal residential ventilation needs should be met with commercial equipment. I reference that guide to provide readers with a good explanation of what their ventilation is supposed to accomplish and why.

It may be worth noting here that it is possible to have high flow and low noise. I have a Wolf Pro Island hood (manufactured by Independent) and a Wolf 1500 CFM (rated) roof mounted blower (manufactured by Broan/NuTone). In between is a 10-inch Fantech silencer. Other than some rumble from the blower, the ventilation noise is mainly baffle edge turbulence hiss. Blower turbulence noise, and more than half of duct turbulence noise is removed by the silencer.

Where a blower is close to the cook, silencing methods are very limited. Larger diameter blower fans run at a lower speed may be the only option left. In such a case, commercial blowers may have a place.

@Allan if you haven't ordered your Trade-Wind insert yet, you might want to take note that all those liners appear to be completely flat on the underside with no containment area, as far as I can see online. The Trade-Wind is definitely cheaper than the average professional-style hood, but this may be one way they are reducing cost, by eliminating the baffle angle and thus containment capacity.

BlueStar has differing sizes of containment among their hoods and liners, made all the more confusing by the fact that they don't depict nor specify this online. Read a thorough review of BlueStar [here[(https://www.houzz.com/discussions/bluestar-vs-wolf-vent-hood-dsvw-vd~5584148) including about how difficult it is to operate the control knobs, something I learned via a showroom visit two days ago.

I've changed my mind about Wolf hoods after visiting a showroom and seeing the demos. The control knobs are definitely plastic and can break off with rough handling, but the beauty and construction of these hoods have no match to anything else I've seen, and reports of other quality issues are rare. By finding a floor demo model on discount, it's possible to negotiate the cost somewhat. Read more about [Wolf vent hood pricing here[(https://www.houzz.com/discussions/wolf-vent-hood-pricing-dsvw-vd~5585453).

Our TradeWind insert was installed today - it does angle from front to back. Not 45 degrees, but certainly biased in a desirable way.

On the trade space matrix one might use to weight the relative merits of different hoods, for me the lowest weighting would be whether or not the knobs were plastic, assuming real metal knobs are in use by any competing hoods in the trade space. Knobs would certainly be the most easily replaced part. The knobs on my Wolf (made by Independent ca. 2007) hood look like aluminum, but seem to be plastic, and they haven't broken yet. They are fitted to standard "D-shape" electrical component shafts (also plastic), so if one wanted to upgrade them, there are plenty of electronics distributors, e.g., Digikey, Allied, etc., that likely can provide compatible metal knobs.

So far I haven't had any guests comment on this detail. Maybe they were too embarrassed for me to mention it.

Michelle, thanks for the insight on the Trade-Wind angle. It's hard to see in photos online. I purchased the Wolf pyramid hood yesterday and the angle looks to be pronounced, at least 45 degrees.

Kaseki, the Wolf knobs even if they are plastic look really nice. I doubt any of your guests would notice unless they felt of them. I'd only been alerted to it by seeing so many customer reviews saying they were unhappy the knobs broke. A salesman told me he's seen a lot of broken ones but that his own Wolf hood has been in his home for 2 years, and he's had no problem. Yes, easily replaced if necessary. I imagine under normal usage the knobs will probably hold up just fine. The hood I purchased was a used showroom demo, and the knobs were perfectly intact. Everything else about the Wolf hood is simply beautiful, and we're really happy with the purchase. Can't wait to see how it vents once we have it installed. Thanks for all your help!

To clarify some baffle angle comments in this thread: When I refer to baffle angle, it is positive from horizontal. Commercial hoods are required to be 45 degrees or steeper. Residential hoods can be zero degrees or steeper. Typically, the zero degree ones do not provide much capture volume under them. My Wolf Pro hood's baffle angle is about 18 degrees. Capture volume height is only a little more than 1 inch depth at the front and back edges, and about 5 inches at midpoint. My hood is very wide, however, so any transient plumes have a fair amount of transverse volume to fill.

@ Allan and inspo inspo , as Michelle states the Tradewind has a good angle on the baffles. They may not be as expensive as you think they should be but after 10 years of heavy use I can tell you that there isn't anything else out there anywhere as good. I never had any grease to clean up and I am pretty sure we did way more greasy cooking with excessive waste than most anyone who posts on here. Cost isn't indicative of performance in many cases. The Tradewind name is one that any cook can be sure of .

Just a general note here, if someone cooked with grease for a decade and "never had any grease to clean up" off of the hood baffles, then the grease was going into the ducting or else the blower wasn't being turned on as often as would have been beneficial to extract grease out of the air circulating in the home. Grease that collects inside wall or attic ducting is a fire hazard, so it would be good to check the interior ducting surfaces if it is a possibility this has happened.

I find it hard to believe that someone doing greasy cooking for 10 years has no grease anywhere in their hood. No matter how good a hood is there will be grease in it some where. Unless of course they mean no grease on the outside.

@vinmarks In a comment in another thread a few months ago SH amazingly also states that she had a built-in deep fat fryer in addition to the range. Go figure. Could be, like you said, the comment isn't clear and that she was cleaning up grease off the hood itself, just not elsewhere. Also, making an exclusionary statement that there is nothing "anywhere as good" on the market than a Brand X economy tier hood is pretty bold. The science of having a larger capture area with more deeply slanted baffles speaks for itself, and plenty of other brands truly excel in this. Regardless, it's always nice to have someone speak up for the adequacy of an economy choice when price is more of a factor than ultimate performance for shoppers looking for reviews as the OP was.

I believe I stated that it was obvious how well our Tradewind 1400 cfm hood worked BECAUSE the baffles caught all the grease. We cleaned them a minimum of once a week and more often when we were using the Miele builtin fryer and wok cooking frequently. You can view the pics I linked to and see the HOGS rising. Of course you can doubt the efficiency of a less expensive piece of equipment but the proof was in my kitchen and surrounding rooms. Clean clean clean. Price doesn't reflect the quality on all things. I wouldn't have anything but Tradewind in my new kitchen remodel. My experience is a confirmation of how good their equipment is. I am being bold for sure with good reason. It is important for reviews to reflect the quality and help businesses do well. I believe in telling it like it is. We cooked WAY more than most people who come to these forums. I want to make sure that anyone buying a hood gets a great piece of equipment for their home so they can enjoy cooking as much as we do.

See below for a direct quote from my first post :

"It is the world's easiest hood to clean as ALL the grease accumulates on the baffles."

@Sue Hawkins Thanks for clarifying. It had been long enough since you posted your first comment that I hadn't remembered nor scrolled back to see that you had mentioned cleaning baffles. Your unedited second comment deeper in the thread, to which we were replying lately, mentioned nothing about cleaning the baffles and therefore was contradictory in context. We are glad your Trade Wind works well according to your own evaluation of your home.

Sue Hawkins - that's you, right, Trailrunner?! Lovely to see your name pop up! I remember your kitchen and exterior so clearly. Hope the family is doing well!! IIRC DD or DS was in the restaurant business? Always hoped to make a trip down to visit; nice excuse for a road trip.

We have a 48" CC gas 6 burner and I wash the baffles when I remember to (bad old bat). Washing weekly is a great idea T.

Our hood is a Prestige with a remote blower and we have a big old sump. We have Latke night with 10-15 people once a year, with 4-6 pans going and not a whiff of cooked oil lingers. Love the hood. Definitely not the quietest, but does it ever work.

Het Old Bat...yes I changed my " handle"...glad to see you . I will stick with what I can afford here in this new to us 100 yr old house. We don't do near the cooking we were doing and no fryer still doing a lot of wok cooking though. I am getting the Miele Convection Steam oven and looking forward to experimenting with that. Hope you are still loving that great pantry y'all designed !! I loved the builtins in your living/sitting room as well. Nice to see familiar faces. c

Sue - I'm incredibly envious of the Miele Convection Steam oven, what fun you'll have! Congrats on the new house and I'll look forward to seeing pictures as you renovate and cook:)

We have a Vent-A-Hood 42” Magic Lung over a 36” Thermador 6 burner rangetop. The hood is extremely quiet, and does a great job of catching smells and grease. The baffles are easy to clean. IMO, you can’t go wrong with Vent-A-Hood.

What did you end up getting? I am in the process for looking for a hood insert for my 36" Culinarian 6-burner.

Sue Hawkins related 10Jan2019 and again 19Jan2019: "It is the world's easiest hood to clean as ALL the grease accumulates on the baffles."

This cannot be true. There are no commercial baffle filters that collect all of the grease, and I doubt that Tradewinds discovered a secret airfoil shape to achieve it for residential hoods. Grease particulates contained in a cooking plume encompass a range of sizes. The larger are centrifuged out onto the baffle surfaces when moved through them at sufficient velocity. The smaller particles do not and ideally are intended to be blown out of the duct system into the outside air. Generally, some intermediate particles will impinge and stick to duct surfaces, as well as interior hood surfaces. These often (in residential cooking) form a very thin film that doesn't drip or flow. In commercial cooking where the rate of deposition is much higher, the build-up can be significant. This is why commercial cooking exhaust ducts require cleaning and inspection once a year.

In the plot below, the range of particle sizes vs. what the baffle collects is shown for a particular baffle at a particular airflow for a particular cooking condition.

When stringent particulate emission requirements are imposed on commercial kitchens, a series of filers is used, each type optimized for a particle size range. If grease molecules are to be treated, UV is one solution.