How to Clean Range Hood Filters

Today I am  going to show you a very easy way to clean your range hood filters. I am going to be honest with you, I have never cleaned any of our range hood vents…ever! They went for years collecting grease and grime and as a result, didn’t perform as well as they would have, had the filter been clean. Hmmm, maybe that’s why the smoke detector kept going off!

Here’s a simple test to see how dirty and clogged your filter is, we are going to test the power of the range hood. Turn your vent hood on and take a tissue and place it under your hood, maybe half way down between the range and the hood. Does your hood suck the tissue up, or do you have to hold the tissue fairly close to the hood before it will get sucked up by the hood? Mine didn’t work very well, but of course my filters were extremely dirty!

I thought that maybe I should presoak the filters? Sounded like a good idea at the time. I started by removing both filters from the hood and soaked them in the kitchen sink in very hot water and liquid dish soap. After they soaked a while, and the grease was loose, I brushed one of them with a kitchen brush. The picture below shows the filter on the right after it was soaked and brushed.

It was far from clean, the grease and grime were very difficult to remove and the filter was still clogged. Time to pull out the big guns! Vinegar and Baking soda!

  I boiled a large pot of water. You want to select a pot wide enough for both filters to fit into the water.I added 1 cup of vinegar to the water.When the water started boiling, I added 1 tablespoon of baking soda. Add the baking soda slowly, since it foams up.You may have to turn the heat level down to avoid boiling over. Add the filters to the boiling water.You may notice that I inadvertently left the film on around the filters. Live and learn. The boiling water peeled it right off, no harm done. Remember I mentioned this was my first time?

After soaking for 5 minutes, I removed them from the pot using tongs.This is what they looked like after coming out of the water and cleaning them with a brush. The one on the right was the filter that had been presoaked. It looked a bit cleaner. Was the presoaking a good idea?I returned the filters to the water to clean the other sides, they boiled for 5 minutes.

Here they are after coming out of the water. The filter on the right is the filter that had been soaked. It was not as clean as the filter that had not been presoaked.

I gave them both a good brushing and here are the final results.The filter on the left was easier to brush and looked cleaner, that was the one that had not been presoaked. In my opinion, the presoaking was not worth the effort and in fact made the job more difficult and didn’t produce any better result.

This really was so easy to do with vinegar, baking soda and a pot of boiling water. Give it a try and let me know if it worked for you. Thanks for stopping by.