Thank you for all the comments—they helped me so much! I’ve had my Zephyr Gust hood for 6-7 years, and one bulb recently went out. I decided I wanted to go with LED replacements because they will last longer, use less energy, and the light color temperature (3000K) will match my LED under cabinet lighting better. I purchased the bulbs and a suction cup from the Zephyr website, even though the bulbs seemed to be overpriced. I wanted the suction cup and I wanted to make sure to have the appropriate LED bulb. There are so many choices with beam angle, lumens, CRI, and color temperature. Here are the specs for the bulb they sell on the website: Intertek KLLUG-6B Model Z0B0040 Bulb Base GU10 Color Temp 3000K CRI >=80 Wattage 6 Lumens 480 Beam Angle flood 38 degrees The first bulb came right out, but the second was a bit of a bother. It finally (in reality just a couple minutes) came out, and I didn’t have much problem getting them back in. Pay attention to the position of the 2 prongs when you pull it out so you know what angle you are shooting for when you put them back in. I did remove the filters first so I could see what I was doing, but I’m not sure it helped.

Best by Broan is a line made by Broan. They seem to be a higher end vent while there are some builder grade under the best name also. I found it a bit confusing and can't help you on that. Anyway, I've put a link to the website to help you. You can download a catalog from there, and if it like the one I had, near the end there would be a chart that has a comparison of the features and might help you find the kind of lighting you are looking for. I got the first one listed under the pro style hoods (K260A with an EB12 blower -- external 1200 cfm). I couldn't find the exact hood we wanted, so we got this one and decided not having multiple light settings was okay. We wanted the light for seeing our cooking better -- not really for mood lighting. It has been fine in that regard and we don't miss the lower setting. I also don't find that they get too hot for me. I do sometimes feel them as warm, but not hot. We mounted it 36" above the counter height, so that may help -- they aren't right in our face. I have a tall family, and that was one of the things that we liked about this hood -- we could mount it higher and not bang our heads on it. Good luck. Hoods are one of the tougher appliances to shop for -- you can't see that many of them and you can see and hear very few in operation. I bought mine in realiance on the appliance salesman at the store where I bought the rest of my appliances who had been to shows and factories and seen and heard them. I hadn't talked to him about any other appliances, but my cabinet lady had me talk to him when I had some questions about the Ventahood after reading here. Can I tell you it's the perfect hood? Not really. Like I said, I'd have liked the variable blower and dimmable lights. I like the classic styling of this one, but I liked a lot of others too. And in an ideal world, I'd have had the room to install a silencer on the duct. LOL But, it looks good, works very well and does so much more and more quietly than the downdraft we had in the island before that we are quite happy. We've been known to leave it running and forget it for a while. That would never have happened with any other vent I've owned or used. Hope that helps.

I also considered kaseki's advice about wiring in a fan control switch and mounting it in its own little box nearby (say on the side of the kitchen cabinet next to the hood) but decided against it. We really don't need a lot of variable speeds for the exhaust, and would rather settle for just a simple On/Off switch that could be mounted on the hood control panel instead of opting for a big fan control mounted in its own receptacle box mounted externally nearby - very much a visible kludgy affair. So I searched around and found, in of all places at Home Depot!, a simple well-known brand On/Off control lever switch - it is Gardner Bender GSW-18, an 8 amp, 125 volt SPST ("Single Pole, Single Throw" = simple "On/Off" switch) with 6-inch wire leads, and fitted for a 1/2" hole. All for less than $4! One note to the wise - the existing hole in the Thermador control panel must be something like 7/16" because the Gardner Bender switch would not fit into the hole as-is. I didn't have a 1/2" drill bit nor a step drill bit to enlarge the existing hole, but then I remembered I had an old tap-and-die set. I pulled out one of the 1/2" diameter taps and after a few minutes of forcefully screwing that tap through the original hole, I was able to actually screw the Gardner switch into the hole. Although it isn't black, and isn't the same type of switch as the existing hood light switches, the new lever switch does what it is supposed to and has made the hood exhaust functional again. There is only one speed now - either on or off. It was relatively simple to wire in -- you just put it in place of the original POTentiometer in the wiring schematic, and the Solid State Fan CONTROL module is just left unconnected under the hood - not used anymore with the simple Gardner On/Off switch. Bottom line - thanks kaseki for all of the advice and imput, couldnt have done it without your expertise and help! Plus, got a 22-23 year-old Thermador hood exhaust fan running again for $4 -- a lot less than the $130 replacement fan switch (of which none are available), or the replacement cost for a new hood! This is what it looks like now, rather purposeful and industrially high-tech in its own way ;-D:

s luke: First, if you want to use a silencer, then it goes between the hood and the blower, so an internal blower is out. Use one of many possible roof blowers that can flow the required rate with the pressure loss of the MUA, baffles, and ducts (including effective length increases with turns). Duct pressure loss and length equivalents for turns are on the Internet. (In-line duct blowers are also suitable.) Baffle pressure loss may still dominate if MUA is OK. Put the silencer in the attic if convenient. Note that the diameter is about 4 inches larger than the duct. Joe: There are two separate hood functions to deal with: capture and containment. Capture requires that the hood entry aperture overlap the rising and expanding cooking plumes. This size should be determined for the largest pans that are likely to be used for greasy or odoriferous cooking. Given a resulting hood aperture size, then the issue is containment -- keeping the plume effluent in the hood and ducting to the outside. Every hood is different, and the baffle filters vary, etc., and an exact amount of volumetric air flow (CFM) needed for a given condition has to be determined by experiment or a really complex computational fluid dynamics simulation. (Experiment is less expensive.) It turns out that for most residential cooking where the baffle space occupies most of the hood's aperture area, containment success can be achieved by an air velocity sufficient to entrain the effluent into the air going into the baffle slots. The baffle slot openings are roughly one-half the aperture area, so if the overall air flow is 90 ft/min, then the slot air flow will be 180 ft/min, or roughly the velocity of the fastest plume from a gas fired pan. The link I provided to the Greenheck Guide will lead to a table (page 10, IIRC) with air flow velocities for commercial hoods vs. various cooking processes. The higher velocity cases probably won't apply in a residential setting. But if you want to put a charcoal grill in your kitchen, then they will. The velocity times the hood entry aperture area yields the required volumetric flow rate. This is your goal for actual flow rate. s luke: The duct size is an interesting trade between minimizing duct grease collection (due to impingement in temperate weather and condensation in colder weather) and minimizing pressure loss and noise due to turbulence. Generally, the velocity should be kept between 1000 ft/min and 2000 ft/min. Wrestling 14-inch duct and an 18-inch silencer into place is a lot more effort than 10-inch and 14-inch respectively components. So going larger than minimal is only required in cold climates and/or where no practical blower can handle the required flow rate at the predicted pressure loss. So recursively pick a duct size, calculate velocity, calculate duct pressure loss, check the blower or blowers under consideration for that pressure loss vs. flow rate (on the fan curve or some table). In the process, account for the baffle pressure loss. This also varies with the flow rate and won't be published in general, but it should be safe to allocate 1 inch of water column to the baffles when used at the 90 CFM/sq. ft. hood aperture volumetric flow rate. I am running about 20 feet of 10-inch duct with three turns (about 70 deg, 20 deg, and 45 deg) and a silencer and seem to be achieving more than 1000 CFM from a 1500 CFM blower measured under my Wolf hood (made by Independent ca. 2009). Depending on what combustion appliances are in your house, and whether they have their own MUA or depend on household air, you may for safety reasons need to keep house pressure reduction to -0.03 inches, w.c. Under these conditions, the MUA won't impact the calculation, but will impact one's wallet. Cruder, less expensive passive MUA (even an open window with screen at these flow rates), used where combustion appliance safety is not applicable, could have a good part of a 1-inch pressure loss, and that needs to be accounted for in evaluating the blower. The blower pressure loss is that of the entire loop from outside to kitchen to outside.