New cooker hood filter smells horrible

[elainec]

I had a new kitchen with all Siemens appliances fitted in December 2010. The cooker hood is the recirculating type.

At first there was a slightly unpleasant smell when the fans were in use and I put this down to “newness”. The smell has gradually got worse. It has now reached the stage where the smell is obvious even with the fan switched off. Yesterday, I had to remove the carbon filter and put it out in the garden. It gives off a sickly smell that I can only describe as being unpleasantly “fishy”. When the hood lights are on and the filter gets warm, you wouldn’t want to stand close to the hob.

I contacted the kitchen supplier and he was not interested (I’m not sure he even believed how bad the problem is). He gave me the phone number to order a new filter from Siemens. He did say that there was no way I should be needing a new filter (kitchen finished 21/12/2010) and he had never heard of anyone having this problem.

As these filters are expensive, I am reluctant to buy replacement filters without finding out why I have experienced this problem and whether it is likely to keep happening due to a design fault or something.

Has anyone heard of anything like this happening before? Does anyone have any ideas?

I have washed the grease filters in the dishwasher. I never deep fry food. I have used the extractor on average twice a week when cooking things such as cauliflower or broccoli. On the rare occasions I have cooked fish it has been foil wrapped in the oven. The only fishy item I have cooked on the hob has been when I made prawn stir-fry a couple of times.

I would appreciate any help or advice – I can’t stress the unpleasantness of the smell enough. I would rather replace the whole hood now and not waste money on more filters if this is likely to keep happening.

[kwatt]

Re: New cooker hood filter smells horrible

Hi Elaine,

I’ve not come across this but I can tell you that the carbon filter will “soak up” any odours that it gets.

I’ve never heard of one that had any smell from it at all other than what its absorbed from the surroundings.

K.

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