I can tell you what we did. We recently installed a 36" 6-burner Culinarian as well, with the Abakka 1400cfm external.

The external blower looks like this on a roof (we have a small house):

We used 10 inch ducting that transitioned to a 6 X 14 inch rectangle since we couldn't fit 10 inch round the full way:

We also used a Fantech silencer inline and then a Modernaire hood that is 42 inches wide and 27" deep.

You can use most any non-blower liner with variable speed fan control, although I think some manufacturers won't honor a warranty on one unless you also use their blower. Liners are simple things and you shouldn't need the warranty, but believe it or not we had a small issue with a small fitting piece in our hood baffle area and they are shipping a new one to us right now (I sent a video of the issue we had to our Modernaire rep, and within a week heard they had machined a replacement part and its on its way), so this might be worth considering as you look at liners.

We did a custom Modernaire hood with their baffles:

But if you just get a liner you can do any sort of surround you want.

The only real noise we hear is the air over the baffles (without the baffles in you can hardly hear it at all even at full speed because of the silencer and the remote blower). But, I will be frank: with baffles in it is significantly loud when the external fan is full blast. Thankfully, for most cooking we need it between the lowest setting and 1/3. Open door broiling, all burners going, etc, it's going to be somewhat loud pushing enough volume over baffles to capture everything.

MUA might be an issue if you have a water heater or gas fireplace in house. You'll have to check your local code for that. But I doubt you'll need to condition the MUA if you need it.

So, things to keep in mind as you choose something to go with that external blower:

1. will the hood or liner take a 10 inch duct or equivalent and can your route that size duct?
2. Does the hood/liner support the variable fan control or will you wire that seperately?
3. what size hood/liner? It's recommended at least 6 inches wider than the range and 27" deep if you can.
4. will the hood/liner warranty be valid with an Abakka blower?
5. How big is the capture area of the hood (area beneath the baffles and above the lowest part of the hood surround). If you are building the surround yourself, you can set the liner up a little higher in the surround to increase this. Bigger capture area is better. Some of the flat sleek hoods have none. The modernaire I have has a small one. Eurostoves in MA has a modernaire hood version that has a slightly larger one.
6. How low can you mount the hood? Lower is better. The CC specifies between 30 and 36 inches over stove, if I recall correctly. We did 34. You don't want to bang your head, but do keep in mind that most people bend forward over the stove, reducing their height.

Wonderful! This is exactly the feedback I needed. Thank you!

If you had to do it again, would you keep the baffles, or consider mesh (if that is even an option) for sound purposes?

That was freakin' brilliant Zartemis!

Wow, I'm bookmarking this for sure! I never could quite see what an external blower was exactly. Thanks so much for posting, Zartemis.

Thanks, I'm glad folks found it helpful. Keep in mind that it was written with tadhg55's criteria in mind (36" Culinarian, interest in Abakka blower, Northern CA location).

Here's a couple more photos for future surfers. Ones I wished I'd had when we planning this.

I had trouble understanding exactly how this hood was mounted. It's a one-piece hood with integrated baffle holder. Some hoods are two piece so you can finish off the duct work all the way to the baffles and then place/build the surround. Once we closed up the ceiling there was absolutely no room to access the vent duct from the attic anymore (there was barely enough clearance to even run the 6X14 duct and we framed around it).

I couldn't find photos of what the inside of one of these hoods looked like. I quizzed the Modernaire support on what we should do. Our vent extended a few inches below the ceiling line. This gave us the option of having the collar of the hood built so that it went on the outside (with the vent ducting from the ceiling fitting inside it). This junction would be sealed with metal tape, but doing it this way meant there would be no ledge (however small) for grease to collect if it deposited on the walls of the duct.

This hood is screwed into the wall, but not the ceiling. Our contractors shimmed it so the front edge would be flush with the ceiling (given that it wasn't a perfect 90 degree bend at the front wall and ceiling).

Here's what the baffles look like (shot from down low looking up into the hood):

And when you take the baffles out, here is the view into the interior. You can see the collar taped to the duct, the cable for electricals, and the not yet prettied-up stubs of the shims on the bottom. It's basically just a fancy box since the blower is on the roof.

Now, just from a gut feel engineering-wise (but no experience in this area to back it up), it seems to me that the air flow efficiency could be improved by sheathing from the rectangular duct opening down to the baffle area. I suspect that flat deck at the top causes some unnecessary turbulence noise.

Very helpful thread.

Our setup is loud, very loud. Or so it seems to me. We have a 1200 CFM Prestige in a custom copper hood. It is loud with the baffles in and it is loud with the baffles out. I am sometimes sorry that we did not go for a remote fan but reading the post that Zartemis did I am not sure how much of a difference it would have made.

I do wish we had put some kind of sound insulation around the liner before we installed it into the hood. I guess we could still do this if we were to take out the liner but we are not of a mind to touch it right now. We are glad we got it installed!

I am very glad that we went for the 1200 CFM. It is sometimes really necessary to have that power. I hate lingering smells much more than short term noise.