Range Hood Installation: Step by Step for Wood Hoods and Inserts

Range hood installation comes down to four jobs done in the right order: fix the mounting height from the cooking surface, anchor the hood to framing that can carry it, run a metal duct to a cap outside the house, and have a licensed electrician make the power connection. On a wood hood like the Fabuwood shells we sell, there is a fifth: the blower is a separate insert that goes into a stainless liner after the shell is on the wall. Below is how to install a range hood of each common type, using the manufacturer instructions and code sections that govern the job rather than rules of thumb, plus what pros charge for the parts you hand off.

Table of Contents

• Four Hood Types and What Each Install Involves
• Collect Five Numbers Before Anything Is Ordered
• Mounting Height: Whose Number Wins
• Blocking and Support Behind the Hood
• Duct Size, Material and Route
• Venting Through an Exterior Wall or the Roof
• Makeup Air and Power: Plan Both at Rough-In
• Step by Step: A Wood Hood Shell With a Liner and Insert
• Step by Step: An Under-Cabinet Hood
• Island and Recirculating Hoods: What Changes
• Range Hood Installation Cost: Parts, Labor and What We Don't Sell
• DIY or Hire: Who Does Which Job
• Frequently Asked Questions

Four Hood Types and What Each Install Involves

The type decides what carries the weight. An under-cabinet hood screws into the bottom of the wall cabinet over the range; a metal wall chimney hood hangs on a bracket or blocking; a wood hood shell is fastened to blocking with a liner and blower inside; an island hood hangs from a support frame tied to the ceiling joists, with a long duct run through the ceiling. We sell the wood option (Fabuwood Allure shells and Broan RHBB inserts) and the cabinet above an under-cabinet hood, not metal, island or under-cabinet hoods themselves. Our guide to range hood types and parts explains how to choose.

This guide follows the wood hood most closely, because it has the least help in the box. The duct, height, electrical and makeup air rules apply to all four.

Collect Five Numbers Before Anything Is Ordered

Most expensive hood fixes we hear about started on paper. Get these five numbers down before the shell, insert or flanking cabinets are bought:

1. Cooking surface height and width, from the range spec sheet. A freestanding range puts its cooktop around 36 inches off the floor, but slide-ins and rangetops vary. The width sets the hood width and the gap in the wall cabinets.
2. The range maker's required clearance above the cooktop. Some high-output gas ranges ask for more than the hood maker's minimum.
3. Ceiling height at the range wall, measured there, not at the doorway. Chimney sections trim shorter on site but never longer.
4. The duct route, in feet and elbows, from hood to outside. Our range hood CFM guide converts elbows into equivalent feet of pipe.
5. Fuel-burning appliances inside the house. A gas water heater or furnace that draws combustion air from the room can trigger a makeup air requirement.

The cabinet math for the range wall, including the filler beside the hood, is in our Fabuwood sizes and specs guide and how to install filler strips.

Tools: the Broan-NuTone insert guide lists a tape measure, No. 2 Phillips, 3/8-inch nut driver, flat screwdriver for knockouts, a saw for cabinet cutouts, sheet metal shears, pliers, metal foil duct tape and a 7/8-inch strain relief (its wire stripper and wire nuts are the electrician's). Add a 4-foot level, stud finder, drill with long bits and a helper.

Mounting Height: Whose Number Wins

Three documents can set the height, and the highest minimum among them is the one you build to. For the blowers that fit our wood hoods, the binding document is the Broan-NuTone installation guide for the PM400SSV and PM600SSV powerpack inserts. It says the bottom of the hood "MUST NOT BE LESS than 24 inches" above the cooktop and recommends a maximum of 30 inches "for best capture of cooking impurities."

The other two are the range manual, whose clearance to combustibles can exceed the hood's minimum, and local code; if either asks for more, raise the hood. Many guides quote 20 to 24 inches over electric ranges. For these inserts the Broan minimum is 24 inches whatever the fuel, so ignore the lower figure unless your own hood's manual allows it. The guide also says a unit less than 30 inches above the cooktop should sit in a metal liner to protect combustible cabinetry; every Fabuwood Allure wood hood ships with a stainless liner. Over gas, confirm with your inspector that the liner satisfies the local clearance rule before you set the hood low. The model code clearance for gas cooking is quoted in our guide to hanging upper cabinets.

Turning the window into a pencil line

Measure from the finished cooking surface, not the floor or countertop. With a cooktop at 36 inches, a 24-inch gap puts the hood bottom at 60 inches and a 30-inch gap at 66. Wall cabinets beside the range usually start at 54 inches, so the hood sits 6 to 12 inches higher than the uppers. That step is correct; lining the hood up with the cabinets would put it below the minimum.

Then check the vertical. On an 8-foot ceiling, a hood bottom at 66 inches leaves 30 inches for canopy and chimney together. Fabuwood's chimney shells are drawn at roughly 40 to 55 inches tall, so the chimney has to be trimmed, and the Curved Artisan's trims only 12 inches; check the shell's drawing against your ceiling before you order. On a 10-foot ceiling the same hood leaves 54 inches, and a shorter shell may not reach.

Blocking and Support Behind the Hood

A wood shell, liner and blower outweigh a wall cabinet of the same width, and Fabuwood does not publish a hood weight, so plan solid blocking. The Broan guide says the cabinet holding its insert "must be secured to wall studs or other wooden framework behind the drywall to support the weight of this unit."

• Open walls: add horizontal 2× blocking between the studs across the full hood width where the shell's mounting points will land. Photograph it with a tape measure in frame before drywall.
• Closed walls: if the mounting points miss the studs, open the wall and add blocking. Drywall anchors are not a support system for a hood.
• Tile behind the hood: if the backsplash runs behind the shell, tile first and use fasteners long enough to pass through tile, backer and drywall and bite well into the blocking.

Duct Size, Material and Route

The Broan guide says "ducted fans must always be vented to the outdoors," "use only metal ductwork," and "do not vent exhaust air into spaces within walls or ceilings or into attics, crawl spaces, or garages." The model International Residential Code (Sections M1503.3 and M1503.4) agrees: cooking exhaust discharges outdoors through a smooth-walled, airtight duct of galvanized steel, stainless steel or copper, with a backdraft damper, independent of every other exhaust system.

Fabuwood's spec book names Broan PM300SS, PM400SS and PM600SSV among the blowers that fit its liners, and its RHBB inserts are Broan-NuTone units. The 250 CFM insert has its own guide. Follow the guide packed with the insert you receive, because model suffixes change.

• Short and straight. Broan warns that long runs, elbows and transitions reduce performance, and a long run may need larger duct.
• Rigid, smooth metal. Flexible foil duct belongs on a clothes dryer, not a hood.
• Seal every joint with 2-inch metal foil duct tape, as Broan specifies.
• Insulate where it crosses cold space, or condensation can drip back toward the hood.

How long can the run be, and how many elbows?

There is no single legal maximum; the limit is whatever the hood maker publishes, and Broan's guide for our inserts gives no number. Makers that do publish one count fittings as feet of straight pipe. The installation manual for Zephyr's ZGE wall hoods, for example, counts a round 90° elbow as 15 feet, a 45° as 9, a flat 3¼ × 10 elbow as 24 and a wall or roof cap as 30, with 100 equivalent feet as the system maximum. Those figures apply to that hood only, but they are a useful reality check: a cap and two round elbows already use 60 of the 100 feet. If your sketch creeps toward a maker's ceiling, shorten the route or go up a duct size before buying a bigger blower.

Venting Through an Exterior Wall or the Roof

If the range sits on an outside wall, the shortest route is usually straight back through it: one short horizontal run and a wall cap on the siding. On an interior wall, the duct goes up into the ceiling or soffit, then across to an exterior wall or up through the roof.

On the Broan inserts, straight-back exhaust uses 3¼ × 10 duct only. Up-and-over routes depend on joist direction, which can force extra elbows; drill or notch joists only as your code and framer allow. A roof cap means a roof penetration and flashing, which is a roofer's job.

Copy the Broan guide's order: decide the route, install the cap first, then connect metal duct to it and work back toward the unit, sealing joints as you go. The last connection is then the easy one at the hood, not a blind one in the wall.

Before cutting the exterior hole, confirm the stud bay holds no wiring, plumbing or gas line, and mark the center with a pilot hole drilled from inside. Size the opening to the cap's sleeve, seal and flash it into the siding, and check the damper opens freely. If exterior flashing is new to you, hire it out; that costs less than a leak behind a new kitchen wall.

Where the cap can go

In the 2021 IRC, Section M1504.3 keeps exhaust openings at least 3 feet from property lines and from operable windows, doors and gravity air intakes, and at least 10 feet from mechanical air intakes unless the exhaust sits 3 or more feet above the intake. Sections M1501.1 and M1505.2 bar exhausting kitchen air into an attic, soffit, ridge vent or crawl space, so never end a duct behind a perforated soffit or ridge vent; it needs its own cap. Section numbers can shift between code editions; your building department has the edition and amendments that apply.

Makeup Air and Power: Plan Both at Rough-In

Section M1503.6 of the 2021 International Residential Code, Chapter 15 requires makeup air for an exhaust system capable of more than 400 CFM where the home has a fuel-burning appliance that is neither direct-vent nor mechanically drafted inside the air barrier. Your state or city decides which edition applies and how it is amended, so ask before you buy a blower. If makeup air is required, an HVAC contractor adds an outdoor-air duct with a motorized damper interlocked to the hood, or a tempered system, roughed in with the hood duct. Our CFM guide covers the options.

The code-ready cap is a one-way switch. The Broan guide's Code Ready Technology procedure lets the PM600SSV be set to a 400 or 300 CFM maximum and the PM400SSV to 300. It can only be set within the first five minutes after power-up, a power outage does not undo it, and "this change CANNOT be reverted." Decide with your inspector before the electrician energizes the circuit.

The power connection belongs to a licensed electrician; Broan's first warning says wiring "must be done by a qualified person(s) in accordance with all applicable codes and standards." What the electrician needs to plan for:

• A house cable to the insert location, with about two feet stubbed out where the insert will sit, entering through a 7/8-inch strain relief. Or Broan's optional HCK44 cord kit, with a receptacle placed where the cord can reach it and local code permits.
• Grounding. "This unit must be grounded." No add-on solid-state speed controls, per the guide.
• Wall switch for accessibility. Fabuwood's spec book notes the 250 and 600 inserts can run from a standard wall switch with an ADA adapter kit (HAWSK3 for the 250, HAWRK5 for the 600), ordered as custom accessories.

Step by Step: A Wood Hood Shell With a Liner and Insert

This is the sequence for a Fabuwood Allure shell and a Broan RHBB insert. Fabuwood's spec book defers the shell's own fastening details to the instructions packed with the hood, so read that sheet first and treat this as the order of work around it.

Rough-in, before drywall

1. Mark the hood on the wall. Snap the cooktop centerline, then mark the hood's width and bottom line inside the 24-to-30-inch window.
2. Add blocking across the full width where the shell's mounting points will land.
3. Run the duct from the outside in. Cap first, then metal duct back to where the insert's damper will sit: 6-inch round or 3¼ × 10 for the 400, 8-inch round for the 600 if the route allows.
4. Rough the power (cable stub-out or a receptacle for a cord kit) and any makeup air your jurisdiction requires.
5. Inspect with the walls open. Close up only after the rough inspections pass.

Hanging the shell

6. Check the liner status. The blower is never in the shell's box. Fabuwood ships the Euro (listed on our site as the chimney hood) and Arched (our wall-mount hood) shells with the liner pre-installed; the Farmhouse, Signature and Curved Artisan shells ship with the liner to install on site after the hood is mounted.
7. Trim the chimney if needed. The Euro, Farmhouse and Signature chimneys are removable and trimmable; the Curved Artisan's one-piece chimney trims up to 12 inches. Measure from the hood bottom line to the ceiling, then cut once.
8. Lift and fasten. Two people minimum. Rest the shell on a temporary ledger at the bottom line, level it both ways, and fasten through its mounting points into the blocking as its instruction sheet directs.
9. Set the cabinets and fillers beside it. The flanking uppers hang to their own 54-inch line (sizes in our wall and tall cabinet guide), with filler between them and the shell. On the Arched hood, Fabuwood says crown goes above the cabinet, not on the face frame, and the sides are flush finished ends.

Liner, insert and duct

10. Fit the liner if your style ships it loose.
11. Prepare the insert. Remove the grease filter and wiring cover, punch a knockout and fit the strain relief. Screw the correct adapter/damper onto the top; Broan wants the damper hinge toward the front for rectangular and parallel to the sides for round.
12. Push the insert up into the liner until the hooks click on both sides, then drive the four supplied wood screws. Broan is blunt: the hooks "TEMPORARILY hold the unit in place. The unit MUST BE secured" with the screws.
13. Connect the duct to the damper, seal it with foil duct tape, and check that the damper flap swings freely.
14. Electrician connects the power and closes the wiring compartment without pinching the wires.

Commissioning

15. Set code-ready airflow first, if required, inside the first five minutes of power.
16. Reinstall the grease filter, run every speed and the lights, and listen for rattles at the damper and joints.
17. Smoke test. With the fan on low, a lit incense stick at the hood's front edge should send smoke up and in; outside, the cap flap should open.
18. Leave the manuals with the homeowner, as the Broan guide asks; filter care is in it.

Step by Step: An Under-Cabinet Hood

We don't sell under-cabinet hoods, but we sell the wall cabinet they hang from, and that is the part people get wrong. The hood screws into the bottom of the cabinet above the range, so the cabinet's height decides the hood's height. Order that cabinet for the hood, not the other way around.

1. Take the old hood down. Switch off its breaker and have the electrician disconnect a hardwired unit while a helper holds it. Check that the old duct is metal, the right size and actually reaches outdoors before reusing it.
2. Read the new hood's guide for its height above the cooktop, the duct size and direction (up or straight back), and the cutout sizes.
3. Size the cabinet over the range so its bottom lands at the hood's height and its top stays in line with the run. The over-range table in our upper cabinet hanging guide shows the 18-, 24- and 30-inch-high boxes that do this on 84-, 90- and 96-inch tops.
4. Rough in the duct and cable, then hang the cabinet to studs or blocking like any upper.
5. Cut the cabinet bottom (or back, for straight-back ducting) using the hood guide's template, and keep the cut tight.
6. Fit the damper, lift the hood into place, feed the cable through its strain relief and fasten through the cabinet bottom.
7. Connect and seal the duct, have the electrician make the connection, and test as for the wood hood.

Island and Recirculating Hoods: What Changes

An island range hood installation hangs the whole weight from a support frame tied into the ceiling joists, with a longer duct run through the ceiling, and island hoods are generally sized wider than the cooktop because cross drafts carry smoke sideways. Each maker details its own support. We don't sell island hoods; our designers lay out the island cabinets and leave the hood to your appliance supplier, and our kitchen island clearance guide covers the space around it.

When no outside route exists, a hood can recirculate through a grease filter and a charcoal filter, so the duct, cap and hole all disappear. For our wood hoods that means Fabuwood's RHBB DCT kit and RHBB FLTR charcoal refill; despite the "duct cover" name on our site, RHBB DCT is a recirculating kit. Install it in place of the duct steps above, following the kit's instructions. The model IRC accepts a listed ductless hood only where the kitchen has other mechanical or natural ventilation (the exception to Section M1503.3), and some jurisdictions are stricter, so ask the building department. Our range hood types guide covers whether recirculating is worth it.

Range Hood Installation Cost: Parts, Labor and What We Don't Sell

A wood hood with insert is two or three line items, never one. Here is a 36-inch install in parts at our displayed Galaxy Nickel prices (Fabuwood list less 35%) when this was written, with a 400 CFM blower:

The inserts are $419.25 for the 250 CFM, $903.50 for the 400 and $1,787.50 for the 600 (the 250 is not offered for the 48-inch Arched shell). Recirculating adds the RHBB DCT kit at $263.25, then RHBB FLTR refills at $71.50 each. Prices move with the price list and oak finishes run higher, so check the live range hood listings and internal blower page before you budget.

Duct, cap, makeup air, the electrician and the installer are extra. For labor, what matters most is whether a duct already exists:

These come from Fixr's cost guide for hood installs, last updated January 31, 2025; its totals assume a hood costing a few hundred dollars, so for a wood hood read them as labor only. A new circuit, makeup air or a long route through finished ceilings costs more. Our cabinet installation cost guide explains how installers price their time.

We sell the wood shells, the three Broan inserts, the recirculating kit and filter, and the cabinets around them; not under-cabinet, metal, island or downdraft hoods, duct, caps or makeup air equipment.

DIY or Hire: Who Does Which Job

A capable owner can do a good share of the job, but not all of it. Where local rules are stricter than the instructions, the Broan guide says the local rules prevail.

If you are installing the cabinets yourself, our guide to installing kitchen cabinets covers tools and screws; the hood goes in after the flanking uppers are hung and before the crown.

Frequently Asked Questions

How high should a range hood be above the stove?

For the Broan inserts that fit our wood hoods, at least 24 inches above the cooktop and no more than 30 recommended. If the range manual or local code asks for more clearance, use the larger figure.

What size duct does a range hood need?

The size the insert is built for: 6-inch round or 3¼ × 10 for the Broan 400 CFM insert, with 8-inch round added for the 600. Never go smaller than the outlet, and skip flexible foil duct.

Can I install a range hood myself?

Partly. A handy owner with a helper can mark the height, add blocking in an open wall, hang the hood and fit the insert. The electrical connection belongs to a licensed electrician, and the exterior penetration is best left to someone who flashes them for a living.

How much does it cost to install a range hood?

Fixr's 2025 guide puts labor at about $300 on existing duct and about $500 when new ductwork is needed. For a new ductless under-cabinet hood or a replacement vented hood, hood included, it averages about $714, with most projects between $500 and $1,000. Our 36-inch wood shells with a 400 CFM insert run $3,321.50 to $4,946.50 in parts at displayed Galaxy Nickel prices.

Do I need a permit to install a range hood?

It depends on where you live and the job. A swap onto existing duct and an existing circuit often needs nothing, but a new circuit, a new exterior or roof hole, or makeup air commonly does. Call your building department; the inspection catches duct and clearance mistakes.

How long does it take to install a range hood?

Hanging a wood shell and fitting the insert is a few hours for two people once rough-in is done. The rough-in itself, with blocking, duct, cap, wiring and inspections, takes days, while the walls are open.

Get the Range Wall Drawn Before You Order

Send us the range model, the ceiling height at the range wall and a sketch of where the duct can leave the house, and we will draw the hood and the cabinets around it. Our free 3D design service returns renderings and an itemized quote within 24–48 hours. Browse the Fabuwood Allure line or download the Allure spec book to see the hood styles and liner drawings, and order a door sample to check the finish in your light.

We design, quote and ship cabinets and hoods nationwide; installation is done by your contractor or by you. Questions about a tricky ceiling, a duct route or which insert suits your range? Reach us through the contact page or call 609-900-3358. Contractors fitting out several kitchens can ask about Captivating Pro trade pricing.

Sources: Fabuwood Allure spec book V.01.20.25 (hoods pp. 18–21, liner specifications pp. 22–24, hood ventilation systems pp. 25–26); Broan-NuTone Powerpack Inserts PM400SSV and PM600SSV installation, use and care instructions; International Residential Code 2021, Chapter 15 (Sections M1501.1, M1503.3, M1503.4, M1503.6, M1504.3, M1505.2); Zephyr ZGE installation manual (duct worksheet); Fixr hood installation cost guide (updated January 31, 2025). Prices are our displayed Galaxy Nickel prices at the time of writing and change with the price list.