Sorry, I'm confused by the description. Do I correctly interpret it as describing a "done deal" that precludes moving studs, using rectangular duct between studs, making the cabinets above the hood shorter, or almost anything else that might have been options at an earlier point in the construction? kas

Of course you can vent it through a flat roof. You probably have lots of other things venting through your roof already, plumbing stacks at a minimum. You just use a different vent cap than used with a sloped roof and treat the roof piercing differently. Somewhat similar to using B-Vent pipe for a hot water heater. Look at all the artificial chimneys used today with new construction to vent gas fireplaces. The tops of those are flat and the fireplace vents through them just fine. On the other hand venting through the wall shouldn't be a big deal either. Go up with a section of pipe, add a right angle bend and go through the wall. The vent cover that comes with the hood (or an optional vent cover extension if needed for extra height) covers everything.

Bee, We have a Culinarian cooktop with a 54x27 wooden hood with an insert from ModernAire. Our counters are 37-1/4 inches high, in part because we're tall but also because this pushes the cooktop an inch closer to the bottom of the hood, given a fixed hood height. This allows us to push the hood higher without making it too far from the cooking surface. Here are our finished measurements: 69-3/4 inches from floor to bottom of hood 32-1/2 inches from countertop to bottom of hood 31-3/4 inches from top of Culinarian stainless to bottom of hood (and the top of the iron grates are about 1 inch higher than the stainless, making the hood 30-3/4 above the top of the iron grates) We planned to mount the hood higher but dropped it down when we realized it is not a danger to our heads. One drawback of mounting the hood to high (in addition to poorer performance) is that you see the undersides more easily and some complain about the hood lights shining in their eyes or in the eyes of people sitting at the island. Plus the perceived noise is higher if there's a straight shot from your ears to the underside of the hood. We have never bumped into the hood and it would be almost impossible to do so because the rounded front of the Culinarian sticks out past the front edge of the countertop, making the cooks stand further out from the back wall. The wood hood itself is 54W x 27D, so the opening is less (perhaps I should have made the opening this dimension). The hood actually sticks out only 26-1/2 inches from the back wall. This is due to the backsplash installed after the cabinets, as usual. We have an Abbaka 1400CFM fan on the roof, and it sucks well, even with a couple of bends. We've had no problem with smoke from wok cooking. To fit the insert in the hood we had Modernaire ship the insert directly to out cabinetmaker so he could build the wood hood to match the insert. During the design phase we made mockups from foam board. I suggest you do the same if you want to play with the dimensions. Good luck with your project! Your countertops and the rest look great! Billy

Too bad that Futurofuturo's ceiling offerings don't conform to TH Kitchen's requirement (1), because that rule might actually be sufficient for a ceiling system. By "that rule" I mean that at eight feet the hood aperture would be 7 ft wide and 6 ft front-to-back or 42 square feet of baffles (and not slots or whatever FF is trying to pass off as a ventilation solution. For the baffles to be effective at capturing the larger end of the grease particle spectrum, an air flow of at least 40 ft/min might be necessary (unless some specially designed lower flow baffle was invented -- maybe the ball bearing filter approach would have merit in this case). So 40 ft/min x 42 square feet is 1680 CFM. This would require a 2400 CFM rated blower and probably 12-inch ducting. These baffles would need to be cleaned more often than normal commercial baffles (per quantity of grease vapor) because being flat they would have no drain and will otherwise drip grease. Just be careful to not fracture the cooktop or the counter reaching the baffles to remove them. 8 to 12 dishwasher runs should be sufficient for the baffle cleaning process, depending on how they might stack in the dishwasher. Non baffle ceiling solutions also work, but they require special techniques, such as UV breakdown of grease particles. For a full ceiling design, see for example the Haydal site: http://www.kitchen-ventilation.co.uk/heydal And the comment about drafts, from air conditioning diffusers or returns is a valid one, making the ceiling scheme ever more difficult to truly control. And don't forget that the MUA system has to match this airflow.