• Kobe Range Hood Inserts
• kobe range hood insert range hood

From a functional standpoint Kobe are quite bad. Compared to other alternatives they are loud and they do a poor job of removing good.

This is long but worth reading: https://bamasotan.us/range-exhaust-hood-faq/

What you need really depends on what you cook, how often and how much of each day you have windows open for fresh air.

We are looking at the 1200 CFM ducted insert for our 48" range.  I do not actually use many burners at the same time usually so can't imagine we actually need the highest speed but it was recommended by our appliance rep.

It's not about CFM's. That's more a marketing thing, ours is bigger than theirs, than functional. If the hood doesn't capture the effluent and contain it then no matter how many CFM's you have you'll not exhaust what needs to be exhausted. The Kobe hoods have limited capture and zero containment.

Pan frying a steak on one induction burner can produce more harmful effluent than having 4 pots going at once on a gas range with lower intensity cooking.

The average appliance sales person knows selling (though a surprising number don't seem to even know that). Very few know anything about cooking and even fewer know anything about health and ventilation.

CFM. Where a hood doesn't have a large volume below the baffles -- typical of height limited residential hoods -- the necessary air flow is determined from the necessary air velocity into the hood that will ensure that any burner's plume is entrained into the baffle flow. In other words, there is no significant averaging of single plumes across the entire baffle space. Inadequate flow <-- inadequate velocity allows the plume momentum to reflect from the hard parts of the hood and escape containment.

I suggest 90 ft/min across the capture area, which implies 90 CFM/sq. ft. of capture area. To get this, all pressure losses (including imperfect make-up air supply) have to be considered vs. the hood blower fan curve. If the OP doesn't want to deal with all that, take the area times 90 and multiply by a further 1.5 to yield a blower rated CFM that is likely adequate. The OP still needs an MUA plan. Adequate, however, only applies to the plume that enters the hood.

Entering the hood. For initial capture, the hood should overlap the cooking zone by the amount of plume expansion (a function of cooking process, gas or not, and distance up to the hood. A 48-inch range, assuming that it is actually needed, should have at least 54 inches of hood width. Front to back depth is also important, and the baffle space on the linked Kobe appears to be in the 18-inch ballpark, where 24 inches would be desirable.

So, hot oil cooking on front burners will likely not be fully captured. Unfortunately, unless the hood sides are curtained (skirted), the hood intake will not capture that part of the plume which does not rise directly into the hood aperture.

We have that Kobe hood for a 48” range. It is tolerable and effective on the lower speed — probably quieter than our standard Vent-a-Hood speed for speed. By code, we were required to install a humongous MUA system that works well but takes up a lot of room in places we had not anticipated during design. (I tried to claim that I would never use all burners at the same time, but that did not matter to the inspector). We needed a heater for that air as well as the makeup air is very cold coming up from below the range across the front of the cooking area. They had to run the intake up the steps of the outside access to the tall crawl that was initially designed wide to accommodate the movement of dock sections in the winter. The dock sections don’t fit past the ducting, so that’s a bummer. The Kobe hood does work and is more quiet than a smaller Vent-a-Hood.

The purpose of "a humongous MUA system" is to keep the house pressure from falling enough relative to outside pressure to back-draft combustion appliances. The MUA required by this safety function is determined by the appliances' back-drafting pressure thresholds and by the hood system's potential flow rate. To avoid mental complexity, most places use very simple rules to establish the MUA required by local code. Occasionally fairly sophisticated rules are enforced, but most derive rules from the IMC.

Yes, I know all that — that’s part of my professional work, but the OP needs to know that such a contraption might need to find a space in her home.

I do appreciate all of the feedback. I don't plan to use this vent hood on its highest setting often, if ever as I don't really cook on a large scale.   I did ask my contractor to check with the building department where we live and they will not require us to install  a makeup air system.

Unless your house is basically a lanai that is open all year then you want an active powered MUA for anything over 600 CFM (and I'd do it for anything over 400 CFM). It's ignorant and irresponsible of your building inspector to say otherwise.

Most MUA's are not humongous as someone posted above nor do they need to take up so much space. Very often they are a simple duct + inline blower that pushes air in to the return duct prior to the home's furnace. In less temporate regions it will be a blower+heater combo (typically made by Electro Industries). Either way it is often installed in teh mechanical room, not in the kitchen.

@N Johnson: Sorry, I misread your intent.

@Flipz: Without deliberate MUA, or a lot of open windows, you will gag your blower and not achieve the flow rate that is needed for hot oil cooking, even on a single burner.

Do you have any combustion appliances that take their air from anywhere inside the house connected to the kitchen?

@opaone is there a residential brand that you do like? i had no idea how expensive and complicated this was going to be when i ordered my range! yikes. the salesperson suggested a ventahood bc it's the "most pwerful and quietest" ha! i ordered a 36 gas range with a griddle but use max two burners at a time and i'm mostly vegetarian. help!

@Georganne Dermigny, as mentioned in the FAQ I think the Prestige High Capacity appears to be the best option of currently available consumer hoods.

@opaone I’ve seen your comments about ventilation, and am wondering about a good overhead vent over a peninsula. Are you saying the island and peninsula are never good places for a cooktop because it won’t be able to take it out well, no matter how good it is? Or just to get a good one? Thanks!

I think I would avoid the phrase "take it out well." One can always configure an exhaust ventilation hood adequate for any cooking configuration, but you might not like its size, aesthetics, or cost. I, for example, have Wolf's largest Pro Island hood over a peninsula. It captures and contains nearly all cooking effluent from the 36-inch induction cooktop and Cooktek induction wok hob mounted side-by-side underneath it, unless I allow a strong transverse draft to flow toward the hood.

As noted two years ago above, and in (now seemingly endless) other threads addressing hood requirements, one merely has to make the hood capture area large enough and the flow rate strong enough to successfully remove the cooking plume contents.

So, the greatest efficiency issue with islands and peninsulas is that the hood has to be larger front-to-back because there is no wall behind the path from burner to hood entry. It may need to be wider side-to-side to deal with drafts, and the typical lack of cabinets on the sides in these placements. Larger/stronger means more costs acquiring and installing the hood, ducting, silencer, and blower, along with counterpart costs for the components of the make-up air (MUA) system.