I love my new hood and it’s not a wolf. Powerful and quiet.

I believe the Wolf hood innards (lining, filters, and blower) are made by Best by Broan, and Wolf makes the shelll and slaps it’s badge on it. If the Wolf badge is important to you, fine, but there are many comparable hoods to buy, including Best by Broan and others.

I need to abide by a 400 CFM limit for my city's building code restrictions yet I also want a professional-style hood with a high containment cavity to help with exhaust flow. This eliminates almost every professional-style hood on the market for me as far as I have found except for BlueStar, Wolf and a couple of very expensive custom-made brands. BlueStar has some issues that Wolf doesn't. You may read more about my multi-faceted hood dilemmas and comparison of BlueStar vs. Wolf here if it would be of interest to you. Installing a make up air vent to increase the CFM allowance isn't an option we will be pursuing due to a number of architectural concerns.

@M Miller, thanks so much for the input. Broan doesn't manufacture hoods under 400 CFM that have a containment area, and I don't believe Best does either with both pro-style aperture size and containment capacity, but I'll check again. This research has taken me through dozens of brands and thousands of hood listings. There really are very few code-complaint hoods that also feature pro-style exhaust components including a high containment area. Right now I can set a fire alarm off just cooking hamburger patties, so we want to maximize what is possible within our boundaries, and the city inspector is coming to check it out, so we have to follow the code. BlueStar and Wolf both have what we need, so after about 5 weeks of research, I'm in the pricing phase.

Also, I have already definitely looked into getting a Broan motor for the Wolf hood to save on cost, but the short answer to that problem is that it would be risky due to some proprietery design features that Broan puts in the blowers for the Wolf-branded hoods. If I did an in-line or external blower, the possibilities would expand for matching Brand X with Brand Y, but due to my installation restrictions, we'll have to stick with the Wolf internal blower if we get the Wolf hood.

@Jeffrey R. Grenz Very good point! I just reviewed my 30" GE oven/range specs to find a hood CFM reference. A hood is recommended but not actually required, and no CFM rating is suggested, so we should be fine there. I'll ask if I can get installation for free. Not sure since I'm looking at a 30% discounted showroom floor demo hood, but the blower and flue cover may end up being full price, bringing the total with tax to just under $3K for the 36" pyramid canopy wall model. Thanks everyone for the help!

@Patricia Colwell - I forgot to address your Vent-A-Hood recommendation, but I was close to purchasing one early on until I read how hard the Magic Lung can be to clean and also the noise factor which is louder in many users' experience than the company's ad material would suggest. Reviews seem solidly split in the middle between people who love them and people who can't wait to replace theirs with something different.

I have a Vent-A-Hood and it is a heck of a lot quieter than the Wolf hood I had.

I just did a complete clean of my Vent-A-Hood. It really wasn't that bad. I cleaned the blower shield and blower housing with soap and warm water in my sink and put the blower wheels in the dishwasher. I have a 48inch hood 1200 cfm so it has 2 blower shields, 2 blower housings and 4 blower wheels. We did have to go out and buy a 1/8th inch allen wrench. We had a 1/8th inch allen wrench here but it requires a long handled one which we didn't have. One comes with the hood but it was never left by the installer. Standard cleaning just requires the blower shield to be cleaned.

Here's a video that shows what's involved for a complete cleaning:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WzdJLXd4PcA

Inspo, have you looked into Victory Range Hoods? It's a Canadian company but they do ship to the US. 22" deep vs Wolf's 24" deep. Victory does have lower CFM pro hoods with the containment area that I think you're wanting. Also, analog controls that are easy to replace; no maybe flakey electronics.

I currently have a Zephyr Typhoon. No containment area, swooped bottom design. Unless I find a deal on something else, I plan to replace with a Victory. (There is an eBay seller for Victory, too.)

@vinmarks Thanks! I did review the video, and it looks like a complete Vent-A-Hood cleaning is a 3-piece process requiring tools for assembly/disassembly and hand washing if the painted finish on all components is desired to be preserved. I've seen other reviewers talk about the severe peeling of paint they experienced trying to keep Vent-A-Hoods clean. I've also seen reviewers talk about grease getting on the actual fan blades and being impossible to completely clean, but this video didn't show that the fan blades are open to the rest of the housing assembly, so I'm confused about that now. Some reviewers talk about the cleaning process taking up to an hour for heavy grease and that they have to clean it every week to keep the smell down.

A standard baffle assembly like found in Wolf or BlueStar can be taken out without tools, and cleaning won't peel away the finish since baffles are unpainted. The difference in price between a Vent-A-Hood I had considered earlier and the discounted Wolf demo model I'm looking at now is about $1,000. Given the expense of the entire renovation, I'm thinking the easier cleaning would be preferable to saving the $1K, and I'll economize elsewhere.

Also, I saw in another review where you said that the Wolf hood you had was installed in 2002 (17 years ago, so probably with an older technology blower) and that you only used it on medium and high speeds. If your Wolf hood's CFM capacity was greater than 300 max which is what I'll get, I doubt our experience of noise will be the same. Conversely, I've seen more than one reviewer state that Vent-A-Hood was louder than other hoods they had had. These decisions are sometimes hard when you aren't able to test out comparative working models in your own home before committing, as each installation can vary. You said your external Wolf blower vented to the wall, so if it was fairly near your hood without any type of noise damper in between, that alone could have made an impact.

@ci_lantro Thanks for the hint on Victory Range Hoods. Reviewing the website, it would appear that even with pro-style exterior shapes, the baffles are nearly flat on the underside leaving very little containment area. It's interesting how often I've seen that mistake (or perhaps cost-saving design) on more expensive hoods as well. You might want to verify that the exact hood you intend to order has enough containment area for your needs, as I've seen varying slants to baffles resulting in vastly different containment areas from hood to hood even within the same brand such as BlueStar.

I can only tell you my experience and we have never had smells. We've been using the hood for a year now and this was the first time we did a complete clean. As far as tools go its 1 long handled allen wrench to loosen set screws on the blower wheels. I'm pretty sure most people know how to use an allen wrench. They are used on towel bars, toilet paper holders and towel rings all the time. Really not a big deal.

Good luck with your hood search. Let us know what you end up with and how well it performs.

@vinmarks Thanks for the advice. I'd been thinking a Vent-A-Hood would need much more than a yearly cleaning based on other reviews. Understandably, using a hex Allen wrench isn't a problem, it's more the idea of a multi-step process versus a simple one that gives me pause. For instance, we have 2 water bowls for our pets, a simple 1-piece bowl and a multi-part, mechanical waterfall one. The simple bowl gets cleaned daily and the complex one monthly which isn't often enough, and it takes at least 20 minutes to do it. I'm not wanting to add more work like that with a hood choice if possible, and a baffle setup sounds so much faster for cleaning. I will try to remember to report back when we've made whatever choice it will be and seen the end outcome, thanks!

@ci_lantro You might also want to reference an ongoing discussion about under-hood capture area height that @kaseki is giving some great advice about here.

One other issue with removal for cleaning -- it has to be done over a cooktop and counter. A gas cooktop on a laminated counter will be pretty immune to damage, but a glass cooktop has several weaknesses to human pressure and dropped part stress, while stone countertops around cooking devices may be minimally supported and not capable of handling human weight pressure. I would suggest that removing baffles (at least from my Wolf hood) is minimal risk compared to removing a VaH blower. My larger risk is minimizing cooktop and counter pressure when reaching up into the hood to clean surfaces in there while the baffles are out, and my stone has more than typical support.

With VaH over stone and induction, I would want to build a removable wood surface that was stiff and air gapped above the cooktop, designed to bring forces onto the countertop at locations where the countertop was supported.

At no point did we use the counters for support. We worked from in front of the range. My husband could reach everything that needed to be removed. I cleaned the inside of the hood itself and used a step ladder.

This is the OP. I wanted to report back on some actual numbers for people looking to get the best price on Wolf appliances. As mentioned in the original post, Wolf controls pricing closely, but most, if not all, dealers may be able to offer a price slightly lower than MSRP and still abide within Wolf's policies. All the following prices are in USD. For example, the Wolf vent hood #PWC362418 we purchased that had been a floor model was MSRP $2,670 but discounted to $1,764. The new 12" duct cover #811024 was MSRP $565 but discounted to us for $508. The new 300 CFM internal blower #814419 was MSRP $425, and we somehow overpaid for it at $466. All three items were purchased simultaneously from the same showroom. So, that gives you an idea of some of the discounts that might be available. Finding a used showroom display item obviously provides the best options for lower pricing.

Vent-A-Hood are excellent.

@back2work - Have you installed the hood? Any thoughts on how you're liking it?

The new ducting is done, but the installation has been delayed. No regrets on the under-hood capture and containment cavity shape or the beautifully curved edges on the exterior. Our blower is a 350 cfm so shouldn't be too loud, but we won't know for sure until it is installed. We are going from a recirculating hood to the Wolf ducted one so expect major improvement in our ability to cook without setting off fire alarms. We are still delighted to have found the demo floor model on sale at a showroom and thus have saved on expense that way but would have paid full price if needed because it was the main candidate that met all our requirements of a pro-shape hood with lower max cfm so as to not require makeup air and thus meet our building code.

Updating this post to say the Wolf 350 CFM blower is very quiet even at top speed and also very effective. This was one of the best decisions of the remodel.

@Aglitter: If you (briefly) open a window while cooking does the apparent plume capture improve significantly, or is your residence leaky enough that an open window provides no significant MUA pressure loss improvement?

I feel quite sure that open windows do improve the hood's functionality, and from what I learned about that a couple of years ago from your previous posts, I have started opening a window when I want to improve fan suction, mainly for bathroom overhead vent fans. However, my home is in a climate that stays warm year-round, so my windows are frequently open anyway to take advantage of temperate outside air, and the home is definitely "leaky," so I have not felt the need to specifically open a window to improve hood function with the cooking I have done thus far. I will mention that the hood was already mounted and functioning when my stone countertops were installed, and I turned on the hood and opened windows to try to clear the home of very toxic smelling fumes that came from the stone adhesive, and it worked beautifully for that at only 350 CFM.

Thanks