How to Maintain Chimney Cooker Hoods

Chimney hoods are excellent additions to your kitchen, removing bad odours and keeping the room smell-free, and providing clean air to keep your kitchen to help you keep your home fresh.

A well maintained and fully functioning cooker hood will work well and perform to the best of its abilities for many years to come, but ensuring that you maintain it and look after your cooker is key to keeping it working well.

Not only does a chimney cooker hood remove smells from your kitchen, but it also extracts smoke and steam, keeping your kitchen free of gases and any airborne grease that has left the hob.

The good news is that keeping your range cooker hood in great condition is a simple job if you keep on top of it. Maintaining your chimney hood follows much of the same principles maintaining any kind of cooker hood so let’s take a look at how you can maintain yours to keep it in top condition.

How Do I Clean My Cooker Hood?

The primary purpose of an extractor hood is to remove the airborne grease and odours from your kitchen, so it’s not too surprising to hear that over time your chimney hood can accumulate a layer of grease that needs to be cleaned.

We recommend cleaning your hood regularly to prevent clogging or blockages and to extend the life of your appliance. 

The other advantage of cleaning a cooker hood often is that it won’t take you anywhere near as long. Cleaning ‘little and often’ will be far more manageable, and feel like an easier task, then cleaning once a year and spending hours.

Here’s how to effectively clean your cooker hood:

• Remove your filter.
• If you have an extractor hood with a washable filter then consult your manual for recommended cleaning products as these can vary between models.
• If you have a replaceable filter then this can be discarded.
• Remove your extractor cover.
• Place the cover in boiling water with bicarbonate of soda paste.
• Once the grime appears to be loosening (try wiping a small area to find out) you can begin to remove this with a microfibre cloth.
• Allow the hood to dry.
• Replace the hood back on to the appliance.

If the exterior of your range hood is stainless-steel then use a mild bicarbonate of soda paste and rub this on using a microfibre cloth. It’s recommended to rub the hood in a linear motion as opposed to a circular one, and follow the grain of the steel.

Cooker hood light bulb casings are also prone to becoming dirty due to their location. Follow these instructions to clean your extractor fan lights:

• Remove the glass or plastic covers.
• Dip/soak these in warm soapy water.
• If the grime is very difficult to remove then use a hob scraper to remove this.

Spending a short amount of time every month removing the small amounts of grime that have built up on your appliance will keep it functioning optimally.

How Do I Replace the Cooker Hood Filter?

Many models of cooker hood have a replaceable filter as opposed to a permanent counterpart. If your model has a replaceable filter then it’s very important to keep on top of changing this when needed. The filter absorbs all of the airborne grease from your cooking and this accumulates over time, eventually leading to a saturated filter.

If you fail to replace the filter then it will not be able to successfully remove the grease and odours from your kitchen and these may settle elsewhere in your house. It’s for that reason that it’s extremely important to know when to change your cooker hood filter, and this is dependent on how often it is used.

Generally, you will want to replace your filter every 3-6 months. If you can easily access your filter then inspecting it on a regular basis will make it easy to see when it is ready to replace. If you use this appliance often then it may need to be changed sooner.

You will also need to know which size filter you need for your cooker hood, so make sure to measure your existing one before discarding.

Here is how to replace your cooker hood filter:

• Gain access to the filter.
• Carefully remove the filter from your cooker hood.
• Place this onto a covered surface – do not place this directly onto your worktop.
• Measure your existing filter.
• Mark and cut your replacement filter.
• Place your new filter within your cooker hood.
• Carefully dispose of your filter.

As your old filter is laden with grease it is highly recommended that you wear gloves whilst removing it.

How Do You Change a Cooker Hood Bulb?

Many cooker hood models feature a downlight to illuminate your cooking area. This is a very useful feature to have as many kitchens tend to incorporate central room lighting. However, like all bulbs do, your cooker hood bulbs will eventually need replacing. As this often isn’t the standard room bulb it can be slightly more difficult to fix if you’ve never done it before!

It’s also important to note that some models of cooker hood will feature a standard Edison screw or bayonet cap bulb within the cooker as opposed to the downlight style.

Here’s how to change your bulb:

• Turn off the power to your cooker hood.
• Remove the cooker hood cover if needed.
• Remove the bulb casing (for downlights).
• Carefully remove the bulb and place within a clean cloth on your worktop.
• Insert the new bulb (if you’re using a halogen bulb then do not touch the bulb with bare hands as the oils from your skin can cause the bulb to blow).
• Replace the casing.
• Replace the cooker hood cover
• Discard the old bulb.

It’s a very simple procedure and shouldn’t take more than a few minutes of your time. This isn’t something that you will have to do very often but it is always useful to know how to do it successfully when the need arises.

The information above is really important to note if you want to keep your cooker hood in the best possible condition. All appliances eventually stop working (unfortunately), but with the information that you’ve learnt today you can make sure that you help your cooker hood last for as long as possible.

Remember, maintaining your extractor hood regularly will also be an easier task than allowing a grime build up and having to spend an afternoon tackling the problem. 

For our full range of Chimney Hoods, shop the range in our Extraction section. There’s a number of different cooker hood ranges for you to shop from there as well as matching appliances in our Cooking section such as our expansive selection of Hobs, Range Cookers, Freestanding Cookers and more!