Wow! Nice to see so many fans of the grill I just purchased! I had Tuesday off (June 18) and was getting ready for a party that night. So I went to my local San Leandro Costco to get chips etc. Well, there on the floor were four Virco grills, one out of the box. I took one look, and wished I had brought my truck. I was back later that day with the truck and brought one home. IMHO a full size pickup truck is needed to carry this thing. I also had some ignitor problems but after adjustment of the gaps they all seem to work ok. I also fiddled with the connectors underneath the control panel and that seemed to help. I also found some fraying of the glass fabric cover on the ignitor wiring to the rear rotisserie burner, where it exits the back of the cabinet. I moved the whole cable up a bit to expose an unfrayed portion to the metal edge. I'm planning on wrapping the cable with some heat resistant tubing where it goes through that area, to prevent more fraying. I had a similar problem with a table-top patio heater I got at Costco a while ago. The ignitor cable frayed and shorted out on some metal. Easy enough to fix once I discovered the cause. I cooked a rib steak on it last night and it came out great. It was kind of hard to see some of that beautiful stainless get carbonized, but what the heck, it's a BBQ grille. The right door on mine has a very minor crease in it,which it took me a couple of days to notice. I'm not about to return this behemoth because of that! The burners all seem to function perfectly, with nice blue flames. Oh, I don't think the handle and the shelf are interchangeable. The spacing on the bolt holes are wider for the shelf than for the handle. Still have to hook up the rotisserie motor. I'll probably do a chicken tomorrow. All in all this is a beautiful, extremely well made grill. I've been using charcoal for years... I have a Kingsford egg shaped grille that I use to roast chicken and turkey. It comes out great, but I'm tired of all the smoke inhalation I inevitably get doing this. I also have a New Braunfels horizontal smoker with separate fire box. I have been consistently disappointed with the dried out results I get with this one. It's also very labor intensive, adding just the right amount of wood/charcoal and trying to keep the temperature even. I'm keeping both, because sometimes you just want that real smoke, but the Virco Classic will be my main grill. Faster and cleaner! Oh, and thanks to those who posted the info on the natural gas conversion. I'm going to order one of those kits right away. I'll have to run the gas line a considerable distance to the patio, but it will be worth it in the long run. One minor complaint: the wheel locks are very hard to get at... but they do work. Just for grins, I took a magnet to the whole unit. It's nearly all 304 non-magnetic. The only magnetic parts I found was the surround for the ceramic rear burner, and some nuts holding the chassis bolts under the cooking unit. As for the stainless burner tubes not holding up to heat, I hope they do ok. After all, they use stainless steel for automotive exhaust systems... which contain a lot more corrosive gases than propane.

Hi Rain, Yes, lots of us are still here, and I hope you'll get the answers you need. You said this post was about the range, but it sounds like it's really about the hood. Once you've decided on what is possible to do, you might want to start another thread so the hood experts know to chime in. First off, a practical question: Can you get a permit to remodel your kitchen given its quirks? If so, can you put your stove on an outside wall? Because that would be the very best way to make good venting possible--to vent out the wall if that's also acceptable to code and covenant. Since you mentioned your budget, I don't know if that would be too much for it, as well. Tall men can usually manage fine with standard height rangehoods, or perhaps an inch or two higher, because the cooking stance isn't erect and eyes front. OTOH, given that your guy only has 5" clearance with that absurdly low ceiling, it may be more of a problem. I don't know if you can get a good draw between the joists in your ceiling. The most important thing to know is which direction they run. If there's already a channel out to the wall, that's great, but if there are cross braces, conduits, etc., or if the joists run the wrong way, it's not going to work. Even if it doesn't draw as well as a perfectly sized round chimney duct, it'll likely be better than a downdraft. If you can do it, I'm wondering if a ceiling mounted vent might actually work on your island. Lots of people talk about them for not ruining sight lines, which I don't have a lot of sympathy with usually because once they're installed people ignore them, and there's rarely a good reason to sacrifice the function. In your case, however, a ceiling mount would be less than a foot above optimum standard. There are also pop up down drafts, which, while not being nearly as efficient as hoods, would be a lot better than your old range.

Drilling through structural joists for anything larger than a small pipe (and then only near the end of a joist in the center of the beam) is out of the question. Forget it for ventilation sized ducts. Your duct would have to be either rising through a convenient closet on the next floor or scabbed to a wall on the next floor (if the location allowed) or be horizontal across the kitchen ceiling. I think we need more layout info before making a pile of guesses. While round ducts are the most efficient, this is slight, and rectangular ducts that fit through studs or between joists are useful. Maybe you can go along the joists to a wall, drop down several inches, and then follow a soffit under the joists to the outside. Find a standard rectangular duct size that has the same area l x w as the circular duct area pi/4 x d^2 recommended for your selected hood. Sometimes ceiling ducts can be hidden in cabinets hung from the ceiling that provide some added storage. To avoid head bumping, set the hood at head clearance height and make the aperture overlap of the cooking surface larger, such as 4 inches all around instead of the typical 3 inches all around. kas

We're almost at time for the next week's thread. I got out this morning and looked over the garden, fall is definitely coming fast. Some thing's foliage looks ratty, others have already gone basal. It's neat seeing the brown eyed susan, cardinal flowers, and greater blue lobelia clumps with their new basal foliage, promises for next year,etc. Colorful foliage and fall crocus are about the only things looking fresh at the moment. Garden cleanup will probably be initiated in a week or so (I want to get the brown eyed susans before they reseed too much). I will probably leave the amsonia, hibiscus, and lobelia stems for the winter, some insects may possibly overwinter in the standing stems (like native bees, I think).