Hi Gaby I would Love to have a 48" range!! The 36" is the maximum our corner would allow without major structural changes and I did not want to go there...however, in my dreams....a great range, George Clooney, etc. That being said....I am really happy with the efficiency of the hood. It does cover the front burners. I am training myself to remember to turn on the fan just before I turn on the range top....almost there! I would think that you will be happy with your hood as long as the cfms are adequate. Cheers Pam

I'm in the decision stage on a hood insert for a 36" range as well, and have looked at both of these plus some others. For what it's worth, I'm so far leaning toward the Imperial, 40" model, largely because of noise factor. I gather from what I've read on this and the appliance forum that the fewer transitions on vents the better and the larger the vent the better, at least in terms of noise. The Imperial, for the sizes we'd need, uses twin blowers, each requiring a 7" vent. Transitioning them to a single 10" invalidates the warranty. At maximum speed (1270 cfm) , the noise rating is just 4.6 sones. That compares to about 7 for almost every other unit I could find and some are more. You mentioned that the Zephyr doesn't look as professional...I'm wondering if it's because the pictures I've seen have mesh grills instead of baffles (which seem to get a better review on this site). If so, I believe you can upgrade to baffles. HTH

Hey folks. We've been using the 36" Zephyr Monsoon DCBL one-piece-liner with the following specs for a few months. We really hesitated to spend this much since our reno is essentially a budget/DIY one, but we are pleased with our purchase. Min.-Max. CFM 250 - 715 Min.-Max. Sones 0.8 - 5.8 Our installation is not ideal as our hood is mounted quite high due for head injury prevention reasons. That contributes to higher noise level and less efficient function. Overall, we are pretty happy with this hood. The hood can't keep up with extreme searing, but we are no longer routinely setting off the smoke alarm :) . It does move a tremendous amount of air at higher settings - at the outdoor vent you can see nearby leaves whipping around. I am satisfied with the noise levels, which was my major concern. At setting 1 (250 CFM) I hear a low hum, which does not annoy me if I am trying to chat or listen to music. That setting is fine for regular cooking and I am getting used to having the fan all the time when using the range. Setting 2 is louder, but still possible to chat or listen to music...and definitely pulls more air. Setting 3 is getting noisy, but I use it for shorter periods when frying bacon, etc. Setting 4 or 5 might suck up one of my children - powerful and loud. I like using Setting 1 when I notice lingering cooking smells after cooking in our large open concept space. The LED lights are pretty good. I like having a high and low setting. I like that all controls are on the underside rather than the front. Also, there are no LED lights when the unit is off (unless the baffles are due for cleaning) - also a plus. I like the feature that shows when the baffles are due to cleaning because I probably would not do this often enough. Previously we used two different builder grade hoods, and there is simply no comparison with the efficiency of suction and the noise levels, so this is a huge upgrade. I was thrilled to get free shipping of the hood to Canada from wayfair.ca. We never get free shipping in Canada!! Unfortunately the unit arrived quite damaged from the shipping process. The box was sturdy but the internal packing was inadequate. We decided to fix it rather than deal with the hassle of getting a remedy.

OK, let me make an observation; if one had a displacement blower (like the Rootes blower on an unlimited dragster) one might be able to pull 1200 CFM against a significant back pressure, or even possibly lower house internal pressure to the point that a window would break. For normal kitchen hood blowers, however, slight pressure differences across the blower cause a reduction in flow rate. At some point modest back pressure will kill all flow and the window is out of danger. How modest is modest? For example, in the case of a Broan-NuTone 801642, (used by Wolf), its rated 1200 CFM at zero static pressure air flow rate drops to 700 CFM at 1 inch of water column differential pressure. (Approximately 407 inches of water column equal one atmosphere, so one inch is 0.0025 atmospheres.) The blower flow rate approaches zero CFM when the pressure difference is 2 inches, w.c. As noted above, one important purpose of MUA is to avoid back-drafting of combustion appliances, which for some appliances occurs above 0.03 inches, w.c. A second purpose of MUA is to allow the blower to move a good fraction of its rated flow rate. Even with windows wide open and no screens, the pressure difference across the blower will be significant due to: pressure loss across the baffles, pressure loss passing hood transitions, duct turbulence, and exterior cap pressure loss. With MUA supplied by other means than screenless windows, there will be some further pressure loss moving air through the MUA ducting, possible screening, and in colder climes, past the heat exchanger or heater. To look at it another way, when the blower is running the pressure loss will be just that which limits the flow rate to that which the blower's fan curve shows matches the pressure loss. There is always MUA, and it always equals the flow rate that the hood can expel air at to the outside. If this is inadequate for containment of captured effluent by the hood, then the MUA has to be improved to allow more flow. The VaH blower fan curves, data from which has been seen on VaH's web site in the past, shows an even more steep decline in performance with pressure loss than comparable Broan blowers. However, VaH's scheme of using a squirrel cage fan as both a blower and a grease vapor expeller eliminates the bafflepressure loss, so VaH can compete so long as the ducting is short and the MUA is adequate. kas