So I finally ordered the SV218D-30 from Euro-Kitchen and yep you get what you paid for. 2 Boxes. At first I was quite impressed with the Euro-Kitchen special logo tape they used. But when I opened the boxes it was obviously used. The styrofoams were dirty with foot and hand prints. The glass is new. The unit looks used. I can tell from the scratches in the back. The fan is metal but clean and it smells funny when I plug it in and turned it on (By the way it's a regular 3 prongs plug for typical outlet) The smell is hard to describe it's not disgusting but more like heating metal. The smell is similar to the new light fixture I installed but it went away within days so hopefully this will too. Handprints were all over the stainless steel. They could have at least made it more presentable. But once again, $460 versus $2000? Overall it looks nice! Just like the picture. Touch sensitive buttons, halogen lightbulbs, the corners are smooth and welded, I love the glass part. Quality looks good. Timer function is useful. I'm still not sure what I will do yet. All night I've been contemplating if I should have bought the Cavaliere at Overstock.com for $60 extra instead without warranty. At least with Euro-Kitchen I deal directly with the manufacturer instead of having Overstock being the middle man. I just hope it will last a few years until I move. I¡¯m going to try Futuro the next time.

It's a universal recommendation that the hood be at least 6" wider than the surface it covers. And as deep as you can manage. It has nothing to do with the fuel used to heat the food. It has to do with the fact that smoke, steam, smells, and aerosolized grease particles rise upwards and outwards. That's physics. A smaller hood can't capture all of those yucks. Stronger fans can't compensate for a lack of capture area either. It's more important to have a good capture area than a strong fan.

In a conventional externally vented system, the flow rate and hood size are established to ensure capture and containment, the baffles or mesh filters are used to capture the larger grease particles, and the rest are [intended to be] expelled to the outside without significantly coating the ducting. To approach this performance with a recirculating hood, it has to meet the size and flow requirements for external venting, along with having a filter stack suitable for capturing all grease particulate sizes and odor reduction. Such a system would tend to be large, although total house volume used would be less than an external venting unit with an appropriate make-up air system. One wouldn't need MUA temperature conditioning either. I think Best makes a unit of unknown-to-me collection efficiency. There are also commercial systems, which might be needed if bacon odor is to be detectable only upon eating it. kas

Most people seriously underestimate just how much grease is aerosolized during normal operations of their stove. We see the splatter of big droplets that needs to be cleaned up from counters next to the stove when frying a steak, but we never make the connection that even more grease finds its way up into the air; and this even happens if you don't pan fry. Just normal steam distillation carries fat particles with it. So, unless you literally don't use your stove for anything other than boiling plain water, you will have grease that needs to go somewhere. Have you ever cleaned the top of cabinets in a house that uses a recirculating hood (or even an externally-venting hood that is undersized). It's a thick filthy layer of built up grease. And that's just whatever got deposited up there. The rest circled back around into your living space. And no, none of this requires that you operate a fry kitchen. It just needs you to use your kitchen for two or three meals every day. Small amounts add up over time. Humans are just really bad at estimating quantities for things that they can't see. Properly sized baffle filters can do an amazing job at removing the bulk of these fat particles. Mesh filters are frequently undersized, are much less effective by design, and clog over time. So, you get fooled into thinking that there is less grease in your cooking effluents than there really is. I used to live in a place that had an Asian-style centrifugal vent hood design. It flings the fat particles to the side and then requires you wash them off later. It would stop and request a clean cycle ever 8 hours of use. I thought that was crazy frequently, as I had no way to actually see the internals and verify how much fat had built up. But now that I have a hood with baffles, I can actually look at the separated fat. It's a lot more than you'd imagine, no matter what was cooked that week.