Kitchens can undoubtedly get very dirty and often needs to be cleaned up, especially their range hood.
There are different types of kitchen models, and in most homes, you can find the baffle filter or mesh type range hood, given that it is most suitable for the kinds of foods that are cooked today in many homes.
Regardless of the type of kitchen that you have, you can find easy ways to give your kitchen range hood a cleanup.
Cleaning up a range hood can be a complex task, particularly if you lack the know-how to give it a perfect cleanup.
Get some tips on how you need to clean your kitchen range hood all by yourself, with the help of salt, baking soda, dishwashing liquid, and other natural ingredients.
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Why Is It Important To Regularly Clean Your Range hood?
You have to remember that a kitchen range hood is quite a complicated device. It has many functions and is primarily responsible for removing fumes, steam, vapors, grease, and smoke from your kitchen space.
You may easily imagine the plenty of functions that it has, possibly when you consider the numerous components which coordinate to ensure seamless functioning.
In the kitchen range hood, there are plenty of components – such as baffles, filters, and meshes.
These components might look small but go a long way to gather all the steam, particles, and grease droplets.
Range hoods are involved a lot, and thus, unless these are cleaned up regularly – these particles can cause range hood damage by sticking to the grime in thick layers.
There can be more problems with your kitchen space due to an unclean or damaged kitchen range hood. There are plenty of types of fungi and bacteria in the grime-filled spots.
Also, every time that you walk into your kitchen, you will get a bad smell. It can also be quite suffocating to have all that steam in that space and no way to let that out easily when you have a choked range hood in your kitchen.
How To Clean Greasy Range hood at Home?
These are some of the best ways to try:
1. Use a dish-washing liquid
It is one of the simplest and most effective ways to ensure a clean range hood. Some types of liquids are used by everybody for washing up dishes.
These can be used for range hood cleaning purposes. It can be found easily and you can use this for cleaning up grease stains and oil easily from the insides of the range hood.
Just take the filters out and pour some amount of dishwashing liquid onto them. Following that, you have to fill a large-sized bucket with boiling water.
The filters should be completely immersed in the water. Allow it to remain thus for an hour or two.
After doing that, take the filters out and use a non-abrasive scrubber to give them a nice scrub. In case you have got a large-sized steel container, you may have the range hood filters immersed in water.
Allow it to boil for half an hour. It can be a better idea, given the fact that you can easily remove various types of stains – such as grease, with the help of boiling.
2. Use baking soda
This is another substance used often for cleaning up the kitchen range hood as well as various other things in the space.
Actually, it is regarded as an all-purpose cleaner. It has a soft, abrasive nature – which makes it ideal for the easy removal of stains of a stubborn type.
You can get sound benefits when you mix baking soda with other cleaning agents, such as salt and vinegar. This can actually give you amazing results. Salt and vinegar serve as excellent disinfectants and can help remove germs easily from your whole kitchen space.
- Pour hot boiling water into a large-sized tub, and fill it up.
- To this, add 2 – 3 tbsp salt, 2 cups of vinegar, and 2 – 3 tbsp baking soda.
- Keep the filters soaked into this solution for about an hour or two.
- Use a scrubber to give it a good scrub, then. You might even boil it, as directed, in case of using a dishwashing liquid.
- Together, all such ingredients can be effective in getting rid of dirt. These can make the range hood look new.
3. Use vinegar
This can be another effective kitchen range hood cleaner and can help do the job easily. The mixture of vinegar, salt, and baking soda is quite effective.
However, if you do not wish to use all of those or lack all the ingredients in your home when there is a need for cleaning, you might get good results from the use of only vinegar.
Baking soda is another natural cleaning ingredient that is used widely. It can work as an all-purpose cleaner.
Thus, it is a good idea to use it for easy cleaning of the kitchen range hood. Also, this is slightly abrasive in nature. It can be effective in the removal of stains that are stubborn in nature.
This makes a fantastic disinfectant, which ensures that its use will keep away germs for at least some time to come.
Vinegar has to be used in the same way.
- You need to pour boiling water into a tub and then add enough vinegar to it.
- Then, soak the range hood filters into this mixture and let these stay immersed for an hour or two. If you want, you may even boil this water.
- Once you do that, get a soft scrubber of good quality and use it for scrubbing the filter.
- Use a cotton cloth to wipe the filters, and finally, leave for a few hours to get naturally air-dried.
4. Using Paint Thinner
This is another thing that you can use for cleaning up your kitchen range hood. It can help get rid of grease stains and stubborn oil easily.
It is also very easy to use paint thinner. Thus, at anytime that you are free to give your range hood cleaning, you must try out paint thinner at least once.
If you lack paint thinners at your home, you may even clean up the range hood with nail polish removers.
These can offer great results as well. Thus, it is obviously among the most convenient ways to clean up range hood at home.
- Soak a piece of cloth in the nail polish remover or the paint thinner.
- Use it to give the range hood filters and the other range hood components a good scrub.
- Once you have completed the scrubbing process, give the parts a thorough wash in water.
- Then, keep all the components in the sunlight so that these get dry naturally.
5. Use caustic soda
In case you have a very dirty range hood and the aforementioned ingredients fail to remove the messes from the inside, it can be a good idea to try out caustic soda.
This is because of the acidic nature of Caustic soda. With a single use, it can help remove stains easily.
- To be able to use caustic soda and give your range hood a good cleaning, you have to put your filters into a tray. Once you have done that, sprinkle a bit of caustic soda on the range hood filters.
- Then, you have to pour boiling water on the same. You can find fumes emanating from the filters.
- Allow it to remain thus for a couple of hours or an hour more.
- Then, remove and clean by scrubbing. Let the filters get air-dried.
As you use caustic soda for cleaning up the kitchen range hood, you need to be quite careful. Once the fumes begin to emanate, you have to stand back so that the fumes do not get inside you.
When you breathe these, the fumes may have a toxic effect on you. Also, remember to use gloves all through the cleaning process.
In case of any contact of caustic soda with your bare skin, you can end up burning yourself.
Top Benefits of Frequent Kitchen Range hood Cleaning
These days, kitchen range hoods have become highly important. This is due to the huge amount of smoke that comes out as you cook dishes, especially the ones that need lots of spices.
Such kinds of smoke can have a bad effect on health. Thus, it is best for your kitchen to have a range hood.
But range hood cleaning might appear to be quite tough when you try it infrequently. In case you attempt it too regularly, the task will not end up tiring you.
This is due to the reason that range hood cleaning can get too tough when there is a buildup of too much grease, oil, and dirt.
The oil can stay put, regardless of how much effort you put in. Also, when your range hood gets filled up with an excessive amount of grease and oil, it will be unable to perform well. It can be more prone to getting easily damaged.
Also, when too much dirt is there, there can be health problems as there are risks of germ accumulation.
The kitchen space also needs to be cleaned up very often, as it is where a lot of fumes and messes are generated upon cooking of meals.
In case your kitchen range hood is not cleaned up for a long time, it can lead to the stinking of your entire kitchen space. Thus, it is advisable that you give it a monthly cleaning so that not much dirt is accumulated therein.
You also need to check thoroughly whether or not your range hood is performing up to capacity.
Check whether it is able to clear up all the smoke in an effective fashion. Find out whether there is any sign of malfunction or any abnormal noise.
In case you spot any of these problems, get in touch with the customer support team of the manufacturer immediately. Or call up an expert fast to fix the problem.
How Often Should Kitchen Range hood Be Cleaned?
Generally, every kitchen range hood has to be cleaned up every couple of months.
Also, if you cook up a lot in your kitchen, your range hood will have to work more than needed. In such cases, you might need to clean it again.
Note that it is not possible to clean up every range hood in the same way. This is because, in every kitchen range hood, the filter happens to be different.
Also, its manner of functioning and physical properties are found to be different as well.
So that brings up the question of how frequently should kitchen range hoods having varied filters be cleaned up.
Range hood having charcoal filters.
When it comes to cleaning up a charcoal filter, there is no option. You might have to get such filters replaced once after every 3 or 6 months, based on how frequently you use the kitchen as well as the number of oily foods that you cook up.
Generally, charcoal – by nature, absorbs all the smell, smoke, and grease. Naturally, the only way for you to keep it clean is to change it once in a while.
Range hood having baffle filters.
The baffle filter happens to be the most convenient of all range hood filters. There is no need for you to rack your brains a lot in cleaning such kinds of filters.
This is because it has a separate space to let out grease and smoke. It can be sufficient for you to clean it up just 2 to 3 times every week.
Range hood having cassette filters.
It is most difficult to maintain Cassette filters. There are many aluminum layers in such kinds of filters. Thus, grease can stick easily to every part of this type of filter.
It is important to be more frequent in cleaning up such kinds of filters. Ideally, you should clean it up once every 10 days.
Conclusion
A lot of steam, grease, and smoke is released as food is cooked every day in the kitchen space. The kitchen range hood is the vent that lets out all of those things.
Thus, when a lot of grease and dirt gets accumulates, its suction power can get disrupted. When you regularly clean it, the efficiency of the range hood and the kitchen is not affected.