In my view, the best approach is to draw to scale a stick figure side view of you at the range, with the height from the floor to your bend point marked so you can draw an arc with a protractor representing the top of your head as you bend. Then, using a cut-out sectional sketch of the hood/cabinet, or just measuring by hand, determine the height that 25-inches of front-to-back depth has to be to miss your head swing.

Other factors that can be evaluated are sight lines into pots on the rear burners when you are not bent over.

Once the height is found, then consideration of whether the liner aperture is large enough for good capture can be performed.

kas

Most pro style range top specs will say 36" is the minimum distance between a burner and flammable surface.

I keep seeing people that are worried about hitting their heads on hoods. It would seem to that there are 2 ways to look at this. You might hit your head once or maybe twice and you learn not to do it, kind of like when you were a little kid and you walked past an oven that was on and you touched it and you burned yourself, you learned not to do that again. The second is why do people feel the need to stick their heads and faces above the heat and steam of the pots and pans to reach the back burners of the appliance? Just to give a reference point I am 6'4" tall and my hood is just above my line of sight, right in prime head banging territory and I learned pretty quick not to hit my head.

Clearance from range top to wood .....HAS TO BE 36" for code

The liner should overlap the wood edge at the base. This will probably require a custom sized cabinet, or some added stainless steel.

Your foe is not the burners, which, unless induction type, could degrade the wood due to heat, but an unintended flambe impinging on the wood.

kas

interesting. The cabinet shop manager told me they typically install their custom wood hoods at 31" (and from what I can tell about 90% of their homes do have a custom wood hood). I know the cabinet designer was asking me about corbels because those would cause a problem with code and the hood would have to be wider so the corbels weren't over the range. I don't have any corbels in my hood design though.

Point being they *seem* be to carefully following code and I know they get all the proper inspections done at the various points of the building process. We are in Michigan, don't know if the code varies at all state by state.

Look at the bottom of the page you will see

**914 clearly says "36" minimum clearance from counter-top to combustible materials without ventilation hood."

I could be reading it wrong. It should be noted that you are using an INSERT not a ventilation hood.

Here is a link that might be useful: Wolf Range top specs

doesn't the insert function as a ventilation hood in combination with the wood shell? I will definitely ask, but it seems odd they wouldn't have come across this situation before and know how to handle it properly. Don't a lot of people have wood hoods?

Most other manufacturers make it much clearer by simply saying " 36" Minimum to Combustible material"

It might be wise to call Wolf and ask them the question directly, maybe they interpreter the code differently than other range companies. Will be interesting to see what the answer is.