How often should you clean your range hood filter?

Why bother

A greasy filter is a grease-fire risk. Standard upkeep. Dull and cheap, and a lot less dull than whatever it's quietly preventing.

What the job involves

1. Pop the metal mesh filter out of the underside of the hood. There's a finger loop, push up and it releases.
2. Soak it in hot water with degreasing dish soap and a half cup of baking soda. Fifteen to thirty minutes, an hour if it's properly caked on.
3. Scrub the mesh with a soft brush, rinse until the suds are gone, dry it fully, slot it back. Aluminum mesh will also survive a dishwasher cycle.
4. Ductless hood? There's a charcoal filter too. That one doesn't wash, it gets binned and replaced.

Do it yourself, or pay someone?

Yourself, easily. It's a sink job, no tools, half an hour. The only thing worth paying a pro for is a full hood-and-duct degrease, and even then not the filter.

What skipping it costs

A grease-soaked filter stops trapping grease and chokes the airflow, which is much the same as handing a stovetop flare-up a fuel supply. Cooking oil and fat are the leading thing that catches in kitchen fires. Put one out and the cleanup runs somewhere between $3,000 and $18,000 for the smoke, soot and scorched cabinets, and a good deal more if it gets out of the kitchen. The filter costs a soak in the sink.

Signs it's overdue

• Cooking smells and smoke hang about instead of clearing, and the fan's either louder or feebler than it used to be.
• The filter looks greasy, or feels tacky when you touch it.
• Hold it up to a light. If the light can't get through the mesh, neither can your kitchen's air.

When to start thinking about it

A few days' warning does it. Grumpty grumbles 2 days out, then leaves you alone. Mark it done and Grumpty sets the next one, every 3 months, so you can go back to forgetting it exists.

Questions people ask