6 Helpful Kitchen Hood Cleaning Tips To Try in 2024

6 Helpful Kitchen Hood Cleaning Tips To Try in 2024

Keeping everything in your kitchen spotlessly clean can be a daunting task, yet it’s an unavoidable necessity. Unfortunately, many people forget about kitchen hood maintenance for too long, which leaves them with a smelly mess that can be quite difficult to get rid of.

That’s why we recommend starting a cleaning routine as soon as possible! Here’s a couple of tips to get things started!

1. Get it scheduled!

In most cases, you don’t really need to clean your range hood that often. However, if you’re deep frying and doing some heavy cooking daily, you might want to consider cleaning it more frequently. It all depends on your specific kitchen habits, so make sure to clean accordingly to your own needs. You’ll notice when your hood needs cleaning by noticing a foul smell coming from the vents. Our advice is to get it all cleaned before any signs of accumulated grease, dust, and bacteria (that produce the smell in the first place) appear. Basically, keep a cleaning schedule and designate certain days on your monthly calendar for deep-cleaning your hood and its vents and filters.

As soon as it becomes a set routine, it will become much easier to handle! If you just keep doing it randomly, you’re more likely to forget about it and create some unnecessary problems for yourself.

2. Use HOT water!

As you’ll be dealing with greasy surfaces, cold or lukewarm water simply won’t be able to do the trick. When it comes to grease, there’s only one rule: the hotter the better! Get it boiled if you have to, just keep it as hot as you can for the best possible results!

Once you have your boiling water, we recommend getting some dish soap and baking soda. Your filters should be soaked in this hot solution for about half an hour if you want it to be effective. Only after the excess grease is removed, you can start scrubbing your filters clean!

Overall, if you try to use lukewarm water, you won’t be able to get far. Your filters won’t be free of all the accumulated grease and all of your efforts will be for nothing. No matter how strong the dish soap you’re using is, without the help of boiling water you won’t be able to remove the grease. So don’t believe the suppliers when they tell you their cleaning products remove grease by having some mysterious magical properties!

3. Get high-quality cleaning products

The dish soap you’ll be using has to be of good quality if you want to succeed in cleaning the hood properly. You can also find some specialized anti-grease products that can help you clean everything thoroughly. However, DIY-ing your own cleaning solution with some dish soap and a bit of baking soda is completely viable. You don’t have to buy overpriced cleaning products just to get your hood functional again. Still, don’t go for the cheapest product around as these can do you more harm than good.

If you’re not sure what brand of products to use we recommend reading up on some online reviews before making your choice. Also, you can always ask an industry professional for some advice to maximize your cleaning results.

4. Simply hire a professional company

While kitchen hood maintenance and care aren’t the most complicated things in the world, those activities could take up a lot of your time and energy if you want to do it efficiently. That’s why many people simply leave it to the hands of professionals.

Range hood cleaning services such as the Atlanta-based www.hoodcleaningservicesatlanta.com can help you achieve the best results as quickly as possible. In this way, you won’t be forced to sacrifice your precious time and energy on such a mundane task, which is a huge plus.

Other than that though, professional cleaners can give you some valuable advice for keeping your hood healthy. They’ll be able to help you with creating and managing your cleaning schedule in no time!

Make sure to do your research to find a high-quality cleaning service in your local area. Look at their online ratings and customer testimonials to get a better picture. Even better, get a recommendation from your friends or colleagues if they’re using a similar service.

5. Never forget about the vent

The vent that connects your hood to the outside can sometimes get clogged with grease. When that happens, your hood may lose its functionality, so be careful to check it while you’re cleaning your filters.

If there’s grease built up in the vent, you may want to contact a professional. Cleaning it by yourself is usually not the best way to go about it, since you’re probably lacking in expertise and proper equipment.

Whatever the case, if you notice there’s tons of grease accumulated in your vent, clean it as soon as possible, as it can present a serious fire hazard. A professional cleaner will be able to help you prevent such issues from happening in the future, so consider hiring one.

6. Clean the outside too

Lastly, you should always keep the exterior as clean as possible. The splatter from cooking particles can make a huge mess and potentially ruin how your hood looks. In the long run, it can also be potentially damaging to the hood materials as well, so make sure to clean at least once a week.

Wiping it with a wet cloth and a bit of a dish detergent should be enough to finish the job. It will also only take you a couple of minutes to get it done, so there’s no real reason to skip this task!

The bottom line

Cleaning your kitchen hood from time to time is of the utmost importance. The frequency on which you should do it mostly depends on your cooking habits. Make sure to clean it once a month, at least. Clean your filters with some hot water and a bar of high-quality dish soap, and remember to always check your vents for built-up grease. Consider hiring a professional service if you want to get the best possible results.

8 Interesting Facts About Quartz Countertops

8 Interesting Facts About Quartz Countertops

Quartz countertops have grown in popularity over the last few years due to their maximum durability and versatility. Many people are choosing this material for their kitchen because of the many benefits and ease in which they can be installed.

Quartz is an engineered stone, not a natural stone. This is part of the reason why it is more durable than materials such as marble or granite.

Let’s explore what quartz countertops are and how they can give your kitchen an amazing aesthetic appeal.

Almost all quartz is from the same place

The process of creating this engineered stone started in Italy by a company by the name of Breton. They were the first company to license the technology that gives us quartz. They licensed it under the name of Bretonstone.

It has given its technology to many other companies over the last 50 years, but all the companies still essentially use the same patent and the same technology.

The process of making quartz usually takes natural stone and mixes it with polymers. All the air is then removed and heated and shaped into slabs. All quartz is usually sold in pre-made slabs.

Quartz countertops can also include brass, mirrors, piece of glass, and granite and marble. All of these materials give quartz a very unique appearance.

Quartz is nonporous

Quartz is one of the only countertop materials to be naturally nonporous. This means it can repel mold, mildew, and other bacteria.

It also takes away the need to be resealed every few years like granite. With its natural ability to get rid of dirt and bacteria, cleaning quartz is also considerably easier than cleaning other types of counters.

This quality makes quartz very low maintenance and loses the requirement of having to buy special cleaners. Special sealing materials or overlays are also not necessary. As soon as quartz is done being made, it can be installed in your kitchen and virtually last a lifetime.

Most countertops are not 100% quartz

Of course, quartz is present, but it is not all that is in quartz. As mentioned above, there are often fragments of other materials.

There is also always a cement or polymeric binder. These other materials usually account for about 10% of the total volume of the slab.  The other 90% is quartz along with recycled wastes such as ceramic, glass, silica, granite, and marble.

Not every slab will have the same amount of quartz and it is usually impossible to tell exactly how much quartz your countertops may have in them. It is not pure extracted quartz from quarries as this would be extremely expensive.

The way the quartz is mixed and engineered is what makes it so durable. It also makes it possible to have quartz counters in virtually any design and color. Finding quartz to match your designed kitchen is extremely easy. You can even have quartz designed to look like marble and granite.

Quartz is so strong it can be walked on

While the majority of quartz in homes is found in counters, many large buildings use it as flooring. It is most commonly found in malls and airports. You were probably somewhere this week where you walked on quartz countertop floors.

The first engineered quartz made in Italy was used to make tiles for floors, not countertops. This is partly because the process was new, and slabs were made in tiny sizes. Now the majority of quartz is made in huge slabs because they are meant to be made into countertops.

Quartz has caused granite prices to drop

While granite used to be one of the top choices for counters, quartz has now gained more traction and is more sought after than granite. Especially since quartz can be made to look like granite but is much more durable and easier to clean than granite.

Since more people are choosing quartz, it has caused the prices of granite counters to drop dramatically. It has also made granite more widely available. While this is good news for granite, fewer people are still choosing it because they recognize that quartz is a much better choice.

Quartz is environmentally friendly

Many homeowners choose quartz because of the environmentally friendly factors. Quartz is almost solely produced using waste products. No new materials are extracted or cut down to make quartz countertops. Over 90% of quartz is found naturally or made with reusable materials.

With the green movement and more people trying to lessen their carbon footprint, quartz countertops are growing in popularity. People can feel good about choosing this environmentally conscious material.

The 10% of quartz that is resins is also becoming less and less synthetic. Some parts are still artificial but most of them are organic resins.

Quartz is not French

Many people think Quartz originated in France because of the way it looks and because of the name Bretonstone. There is a town in France called Breton where stones can be extracted, but quartz has nothing to do with this town.

Bretonstone was created close to Venice, Italy. Not in France at all. The name Bretonstone was chosen because “bre” is close to the word “patent” in Italian. “Ton” comes from the man who created engineered quartz whose surname was Toncelli. They were combined to create a unique name for this new technology.

Quartz is highly resistant

We already covered how quartz is resistant to bacteria and mold, but it also resistant to virtually anything that could be in your kitchen. It cannot be scratched or dented, which means you do not have to be overly careful with heavy items like pots and pans.

Even cooking materials with feet can be used because quartz is so resistant to dents. Quartz also does not stain easily. Grease and red wine are no match for quartz. While stains should always be cleaned up for hygiene reasons, quartz can’t stain, so anything that is spilled can be left and will not set in.