I just had the abbaka blower installed on the roof today - no hood hooked up yet but the fan is huge! A good indication that it will be quiet. I would suspect he is talking trash - curious as to what others have to say

I can't comment on quality of Abakka fans because I don't own one, but they aren't inexpensive and the name is not well known to the average person. Hence the distribution of their fans about the country (any country) should be very thin. So why would an appliance guy ever see high Abakka fan-changing traffic?

If I had one and thought it were defective, I would contact Abakka. If I thought its design were defective, I'd switch to a commercial up-blast assembly that I knew would be reliable. The only reason for the Abakka and Broan/Wolf low profile centrifugal designs is to reduce the visibility of stuff on the roof. Otherwise, up-blast is a better choice in my view, and in the view of myriad commercial kitchens.

kas

I do own an Abakka 1400cfm remote fan that is used with a Modernaire island hood. No 1400cfm fan is going to be quiet. The movement of the air through the baffles is what you hear plus a little motor noise. The good reason to buy a powerful remote fan is you can always turn it down when full cfm's are not needed. I have a friend who has a remote fan attached to a backdraft hood and it also makes noise on high. I am not sure what brand he has. The further the fan from the hood and the install of an inline muffler will help, but moving that much air through mesh are baffles is going to make noise no matter who makes the blower.