I have no clue about our duct work, we vent at 90 degrees to exit house, about 8 feet. Our "quiet" 600 CFM sounds like a locomotive when on high, and our smoke detectors always go off when I cook steaks inside. I have the wolf df range, and I also suggest your hood be at least 6" wider than your cooktop so that it works on your outside burners. Working within the confines of HOA will probably determine your appliance choices. At least you have some existing hood/duct work, rather than a recirculating filter system. Huge plus!

Capital Culinarian Series CGRT362B2L Current stock is all 23k btu open burners that go down to 145 degrees. New version coming out soon will have a "small pot burner" or simmer burner. There is plenty of discussion on the Capital open burner in this forum all you have to is google "gardenweb culinarian." Grill is a hybrid. Gives you most of the power of infrared grill with the variability in temperature of standard grill so you can grill veggies as well as steak.

We replaced a 30" Jenn Air slide in range with a 36" Dacor rangetop. This meant that we had to have the granite cut. We had to purchase a base cabinet for beneath the rangetop. We also removed a 15" cabinet that was to the right of the range and made up the difference by installing a 9" pull out spice rack beside the new 36" base cabinet. The installation is in an island, so we didn't have to deal with upper cabinets. All in all, we are thrilled with the result. It wasn't cheap. Total installation cost was about $3000, which also included installation of a telescoping downdraft ventilation and reconfiguration of another cabinet to accomodate a new double wall oven.

Xicano, our island is 8 feet wide by a bit over 4 feet deep. There is 1 foot (plus 1.5 inch of overhang) to the left of the range top. The range top is 3 feet wide. There is a 24" inch cabinet holding the spice drawer, microwave and another drawer between the rangetop and the sink cabinet which is also 24" wide. Definitely not symmetrical. 1. Symmetry was never a design goal for us. Neither my husband nor I find it necessary or desirable. An L plus island layout is inherently asymmetric anyway. Even more so with a refrigerator and wall ovens at the end of one leg of the L. 2. To us, the kitchen is primarily a workspace for making food - a big tool holding other tools. We cook quite a bit and it has to function well both for a single cook and multiple cooks. We spend a lot of time there, have family visiting and sometimes entertain there so we want it to look nice and be a pleasant space, but it has to work. So even if symmetry was something we wanted, we wouldn't sacrifice usability to get it. 3. There is more than one way to look at symmetry especially with an L layout. It turns out that by putting the rangetop off-center in the island, the rangetop and hood are centered against the wall (the long leg of the L). I think it ends up looking more balanced than it would if we had put the rangetop in the center of the island. We find that this layout works very well for us. I wouldn't want any less space between the rangetop and the sink. We have times when 3 or 4 people are doing food prep and the space works well for that. Sometimes we have two people prepping at the prep sink. One at the end of the island with the sink on their left and one between the rangetop and the sink. We thought about that when we chose the sink and the position for the faucet. The 1 foot wide cabinet to the left of the range top is a pull out for bottled staples (oil, vinegar, etc.) which is very convenient when working at the range. I wouldn't want any less space there. If we had room for it, another few inches would be nice but it is workable the way it is. Possibly, we could have gone with a 15" wide sink in an 18" cabinet and had 6 more inches of counter to the left of the rangetop or between the rangetop and the sink. However, there are times when the sink is pretty fully utilized too, so that might not be any better. It would not have worked well for us with the range centered. That would have left only 6 inches between the rangetop and the sink. I think that would also have looked odd and out of balance with the prep sink, wall ovens, fridge and rangetop all piled up at one edge of the kitchen.