I find this whole p!ss!ng contest amusing. Frankly, I think any differences between the BS and the CC are negligible. Both are fantastic ranges. When I first started looking for ranges, I had one requirement. I wanted to be able to do wok cooking in addition to conventional cooking. So much so that I even contemplated installing a wok burner right next to a conventional range or cooktop. One by one, I started ruling out Wolf, Viking, Thermadore. Until I zeroed in on the 48" Capital Precision with four sealed burners and a hefty wok burner that can be used as a stock pot burner. Plus it came with a rotisserie! I thought it was perfect until I found the BS cult here. What? I can wok cook AND grill indoors? But I had to lose the rotisserie. Let's just say I happily drank the Kool-Aid. But then my kitchen plans stalled due to unforeseen circumstances. A year later, I started revisiting my kitchen reno. To my surprise, there was a new cult in town. And this time is was another product from Capital, the Culinarian, but it was still in pre-release. It was everything the BS could do and I get the rotisserie back! Then I had to stall my project again for another six months to find a new contractor. By the time I restarted my project, the CC was already in production. Without hesitation, I plunked down the cash and now it's in my garage waiting to be installed. In the end, I would have been thrilled with either a BS or a CC. I wouldn't rate one as better over the other. Features and aesthetics are all relative. The Culinarian was the best choice for me. And that's what's most important. I think they're both in a class of their own. They both represent great value in a cooking appliance, especially for a cooking enthusiast like me.

Transy, if you can wait a month before ruling out the K260, I might be able to help you. I'm installing a 48" Culinarian with a grill. The hood is a 54" K260 with an external fan of 1500 CFM. The hood is being bumped out 3" extend the capture area and to line up with the flanking 15" cabinets. As it stands, it's being mounted about 30" above the range. I'm trying to find a way to mount it at least another couple of inches higher, but I might be SOL on that. Right now I have passive MUA from underneath a utility cabinet on the other side of the kitchen, cold toes be damned. If I need to, I'll bite the bullet and install an electric toekick heater. I had originally planned on running the duct for the passive MUA to underneath the range, but I had to change plans. The passive MUA is undersized compared to the 10" hood duct. Hopefully, the inspector won't have an issue with my set-up. I will also be doing a bunch of wok cooking. But I will also be doing a lot of indoor grilling too. Unfortunately, I'm a few weeks away from that, assuming all goes smoothly. The cabinets are being installed this week. The counter top probably a couple of weeks after that. Then another week or two of finish work, unpacking and test driving.

Hi All- Well it has been two years since since we received our BS Platinum (and started this thread) and I would have to say we have a love / hate relationship with it. To summarize... What we like: - The burners work great, love the open burners (although the extra Platinum BTU has no value for us) - The stove looks terrific - The integrated wok feature works well, I love this What we don't like: - The grill/griddle is a useless gimmick in my view (sorry to be so direct), why? Because the heat is inconsistent and the handling / replacement is cumbersome. I see no value in these features better to use an outdoor grill and a $20 Lodge cast iron griddle over the burners which is what this really is - The oven has been a disaster to be honest. We have had 4 service calls, first the retrofit for the defective design which melted an oven rack, then once fixed we have struggled to get the oven to maintain a consistent temperature. Too hot or too cold. For the $8k we paid it is totally ridiculous we had better performance with our cheap GE gas range we had before. Bluestar support has been fine but we are out of warranty now and it seems we may be stuck with owning an overpriced lemon. My wife is a professional chef and the lack of temperature control is making her crazy. In conclusion I would say we love the look and burners and really want this to be our special centerpiece appliance but feel that the oven is mediocre and that we overpaid. If we could do it again we would probably buy an RNB or a dual fuel Wolf for better oven temperature control. Come on Bluestar you can do better than this!

OK, let me make an observation; if one had a displacement blower (like the Rootes blower on an unlimited dragster) one might be able to pull 1200 CFM against a significant back pressure, or even possibly lower house internal pressure to the point that a window would break. For normal kitchen hood blowers, however, slight pressure differences across the blower cause a reduction in flow rate. At some point modest back pressure will kill all flow and the window is out of danger. How modest is modest? For example, in the case of a Broan-NuTone 801642, (used by Wolf), its rated 1200 CFM at zero static pressure air flow rate drops to 700 CFM at 1 inch of water column differential pressure. (Approximately 407 inches of water column equal one atmosphere, so one inch is 0.0025 atmospheres.) The blower flow rate approaches zero CFM when the pressure difference is 2 inches, w.c. As noted above, one important purpose of MUA is to avoid back-drafting of combustion appliances, which for some appliances occurs above 0.03 inches, w.c. A second purpose of MUA is to allow the blower to move a good fraction of its rated flow rate. Even with windows wide open and no screens, the pressure difference across the blower will be significant due to: pressure loss across the baffles, pressure loss passing hood transitions, duct turbulence, and exterior cap pressure loss. With MUA supplied by other means than screenless windows, there will be some further pressure loss moving air through the MUA ducting, possible screening, and in colder climes, past the heat exchanger or heater. To look at it another way, when the blower is running the pressure loss will be just that which limits the flow rate to that which the blower's fan curve shows matches the pressure loss. There is always MUA, and it always equals the flow rate that the hood can expel air at to the outside. If this is inadequate for containment of captured effluent by the hood, then the MUA has to be improved to allow more flow. The VaH blower fan curves, data from which has been seen on VaH's web site in the past, shows an even more steep decline in performance with pressure loss than comparable Broan blowers. However, VaH's scheme of using a squirrel cage fan as both a blower and a grease vapor expeller eliminates the bafflepressure loss, so VaH can compete so long as the ducting is short and the MUA is adequate. kas