Degrease the range hood filter
Quarterly · typically February, May, August, and November
Why it matters
That metal mesh over your stove has one job: grab airborne grease before it gets into the fan, the duct, or back into your kitchen air. A clean filter catches most of it. A saturated filter catches nothing — the hood keeps humming reassuringly while grease sails past to coat the duct, the fan blades, and eventually every horizontal surface you own. And a filter heavy with grease is, bluntly, fuel positioned directly above the most likely fire source in the house.
Whether your hood is vented outside (a duct to daylight) or recirculating (blows filtered air back at you through a charcoal pad) changes what clean means: vented hoods live and die by the mesh filter; recirculating hoods need the mesh cleaned AND the charcoal filter actually replaced — charcoal can't be washed, only swapped, and almost nobody ever swaps it.
What skipping it costs
$100–$2,500
A grease-saturated filter stops capturing and starts storing. Every cooking fire that finds it gets an accelerant pad hanging right over the flame — stovetop fires that should have been a lid-and-done event become cabinet fires. Short of fire, a blinded filter just means every surface in your kitchen slowly wears a grease film you clean the hard way, one cabinet top at a time.
Two ways to get it done
Do it yourself
You'll need: Sink or dishpan big enough to submerge the filter, Boiling water, Degreasing dish soap, 1/4 cup baking soda.
- Pop the filters out — they're designed for it: a latch or a push-and-drop, no tools.
- The soak: boiling water in the sink, a solid squeeze of degreasing dish soap, 1/4 cup baking soda. Submerge the filters 10 minutes. Old grease lets go dramatically; the water will tell the story.
- Soft brush along the mesh, rinse hot, air dry fully before reinstalling. (Dishwasher, hottest cycle, works for maintenance cleans — but a badly neglected filter will redistribute grease inside the dishwasher; do the first clean by hand.)
- Recirculating hood: check the charcoal filter behind the mesh. If it's grey, saturated, or older than a year, order the replacement — write the part number in your phone right now, because you'll never find the manual in the moment.
- While the filters dry: wipe the fan housing and the underside of the hood, and run your hand along the visible duct joint if vented — steady grease weeping there is the sign the duct itself wants professional attention.
Hire it out
$100–$250National fair range — local labor moves this number.
There's nothing to hire quarterly — this task is soap. The legitimate occasional hire is hood-duct cleaning for a vented system in a serious-cooking household: $100–$250 every few years, and worth it if the duct shows real buildup (grease at the joints, weak draw with a clean filter, or a roof/wall cap visibly coated).
If a duct-cleaning outfit tries to bundle your range hood into an annual whole-house "air quality" package, smile and decline — the filter you now wash for free is 90% of the system.
Ask the tech
- Is this hood vented outside or recirculating, and if it's vented, when was the duct itself last cleaned?
- For a recirculating hood: what's the charcoal filter part number, and how often should this model's be swapped?
Red flags you're being upsold
- 'Hood duct cleaning' quoted as an annual must-do subscription. A residential hood duct needs attention every few years in a heavy-cooking house, rarely otherwise.
- Replacement-hood pitches because a filter looks bad. Filters are $15–$40 parts or free to clean; the hood itself is fine.
The call
DIY, always — it's dish soap and hot water. Nobody should ever pay someone to wash a filter.