Rectangular Aluminum Mesh Range Hood Grease Filter 12-3/8 x 14-1/8 x 3/32 (12.380 x 14.130 x 0.090) — American Metal Filter Company

Description

RHF1209 Compatible Part Numbers & Cross References

The RHF1209 is compatible with American Metal Filter Company OEM part number RHF1209. If any of the following numbers appear on your existing filter or in a parts lookup system, the RHF1209 is the correct compatible replacement:

Part Number	Status / Notes
RHF1209	OEM Part Number — this range hood grease filter is the compatible replacement
TJRHF1209	Prior part number — current replacement is RHF1209
AP5628957	Prior part number — current replacement is RHF1209

Compatible Range Hood Models

The RHF1209 is compatible with the following 1 range hood models. Locate your range hood model number on the label inside the hood canopy before ordering.

Brand	Model Number
Broan	17655-000

How Aluminum Mesh Grease Filters Work

The range hood grease filter is the first line of defense protecting your hood blower, motor, and ductwork. As cooking vapors and grease-laden air are drawn up through the range hood grease filter, the fine aluminum mesh grease creates turbulence that causes grease droplets and particles to coalesce and cling to the mesh surface. This prevents grease from coating interior surfaces, reduces fire risk, and keeps blower performance at rated levels.

Range Hood Filter Cleaning & Maintenance

Clean the RHF1209 monthly by running it through the dishwasher (top rack) or washing by hand with hot water and degreaser. A clogged or grease-saturated filter significantly reduces airflow and hood effectiveness. Replace if the mesh is physically damaged, permanently discolored, or no longer cleanable.

Range Hood Grease Filter Installation

1. Turn off the range hood before accessing the range hood grease filter bay.
2. Remove the old filter: Slide or unclip the existing range hood grease filter from its track or mounting hooks.
3. Insert the RHF1209: Slide the new filter into the same track or clip it onto the mounting hooks. Confirm it lies flat and is fully seated.
4. Restore operation: the range hood grease filter is ready for immediate use. No break-in period required.

RHF1209 Filter FAQ — American Metal Filter Company Part #RHF1209

Which range hood models are compatible with the American Metal Filter Company RHF1209 range hood grease filter?

The RHF1209 is compatible with 1 range hood models. See the compatible models table on this page.

What part numbers does the RHF1209 replace?

The RHF1209 replaces TJRHF1209, AP5628957. Order the RHF1209 regardless of which older number appears on your filter.

How do I clean the aluminum grease range hood filter?

Remove the range hood grease filter and place it on the top rack of the dishwasher, or wash by hand with hot water and a degreasing detergent. Clean monthly under average cooking conditions—more frequently if you cook at high heat or fry often. Allow to dry completely before reinstalling.

How often should I replace the range hood grease filter?

Aluminum mesh grease filters are designed to be washed and reused, not periodically replaced. Replace if the mesh is bent, torn, permanently discolored, or no longer cleanable after dishwasher cycles.

Is the RHF1209 a genuine American Metal Filter Company filter?

Yes — this IS the genuine American Metal Filter Company product. American Metal Filter Company manufactures and sells this range hood grease filter directly through rangehoodfiltersinc.com. You are buying from the manufacturer.

The History of the Residential Range Hood

Before Electricity: Hearths, Flues, and Chimney Canopies

The fundamental problem of removing cooking smoke from an enclosed space is as old as indoor cooking itself. Ancient Roman kitchens were constructed with hearths positioned beneath vented roof openings, allowing convective airflow to carry smoke upward and out. Medieval great halls used central hearths under high-vaulted ceilings designed to disperse and dilute smoke before it reached eye level. The refinement of the chimney fireplace in Europe during the 12th and 13th centuries formalized the concept of a capture zone above the cooking source connected by a flue to the exterior — the direct architectural ancestor of the modern range hood.

By the early 19th century, institutional kitchens in large hospitals, military facilities, and hotels were being designed with purpose-built sheet metal canopy flues suspended above cooking ranges. These were passive systems — no fan, relying entirely on the buoyancy of hot air and the draft of the chimney. They were effective at removing heat and some combustion gases, but provided limited capture of grease vapor and smoke at the cooking surface. For these early systems there was no filter, no blower, and no standardized product — each was custom-fabricated by tradespeople as part of the building’s kitchen construction.

Electrification and the Commercial Kitchen Exhaust Hood (Early 1900s)

The electrification of American cities in the 1880s and 1890s made electrically powered exhaust fans practical for large-scale installation. By the 1910s and 1920s, major American hotels, restaurants, hospitals, and institutional food service operations were routinely specifying powered sheet metal exhaust hoods above their commercial ranges. These were custom-fabricated structures: a formed sheet metal canopy sized to span the cooking equipment, connected by ductwork to an exhaust fan that discharged to the building exterior. There was still no standardized filter medium — grease accumulated on the interior hood surfaces and ductwork, which required periodic manual cleaning.

Municipal governments and fire safety organizations took notice. The National Fire Protection Association® (NFPA®), founded in 1896, began developing standards for commercial cooking equipment ventilation in the early 20th century — standards that would eventually be codified as NFPA 96, the Standard for Ventilation Control and Fire Protection of Commercial Cooking Operations, which remains the governing standard for commercial kitchen exhaust today. Municipal health departments in major American cities similarly began requiring mechanical exhaust ventilation in permitted commercial kitchens. Demand for the custom-fabricated commercial kitchen hood was thus established not just by occupational comfort but by code compliance — an early example of regulation driving adoption of a safety technology.

One critical manufacturing challenge became apparent almost immediately: grease accumulation in the exhaust ductwork represented a serious fire hazard. A single uncontrolled grease fire in an exhaust duct could rapidly spread to the building structure. The need for a removable, cleanable filter to capture grease at the hood — before it entered the ductwork — was recognized, and early commercial hoods began to incorporate primitive mesh or baffle-style grease collectors. These were the forerunners of the modern aluminum mesh grease filter.

The First Residential Range Hoods: 1932–1933

The range hood as a mass-market residential consumer product — something designed, manufactured, packaged, and sold to American homeowners rather than custom-fabricated for commercial kitchens by tradespeople — was born in the United States in the early 1930s.

In 1932, in the depths of the Great Depression, a manufacturer in Hartford, Wisconsin developed a compact, efficiently motorized kitchen ventilation fan designed for residential installation. Affordable and manufacturable at scale, the product was the first mass-produced powered residential kitchen ventilation device of its kind, and it launched what became a major segment of the American home appliance industry.

One year later, in 1933, a manufacturer in Dallas, Texas introduced what it described as the first purpose-built home cooking ventilation and range hood product. The first range hoods were produced in a small Dallas workshop and sold directly to homeowners. Outside investment in the late 1930s allowed the operation to grow, and by 1961 the company had moved to Richardson, Texas, where it continued to operate for decades.

Postwar Expansion and the Aluminum Mesh Grease Filter (1940s–1950s)

The end of World War II and the subsequent American housing boom transformed range hood installation from an occasional luxury into a standard feature of new home construction. Under programs including the GI Bill, millions of new single-family homes were built across the United States between 1946 and 1960. Builders, architects, and building code authorities began standardizing the residential kitchen — and powered range hood ventilation became a built-in design expectation rather than an optional upgrade.

It was during this critical postwar period that the aluminum mesh grease filter was developed and refined into the form that remains in production today. the range hood grease filter consists of multiple layers of woven aluminum mesh bonded inside a pressed aluminum frame, sized to fit the filter bay of a residential range hood. As cooking vapors are drawn upward through the filter, the fine mesh creates turbulence that causes airborne grease droplets to coalesce and adhere to the mesh surface rather than passing through. The captured grease drains to the filter frame, where it can be removed during regular cleaning. The filter is washable in the dishwasher, reusable indefinitely with proper maintenance, and manufacturable to precise dimensional tolerances at low cost. These properties — functional simplicity, durability, and no ongoing replacement expense — made it the ideal consumer filter technology for a product that would be installed in millions of American homes. The design has remained essentially unchanged for more than 70 years.

In 1955, the residential ventilation products industry formed the Home Ventilating Institute (HVI), a trade association dedicated to establishing standardized testing protocols and performance certification for residential range hoods, exhaust fans, and related products. HVI developed the standardized measurement of hood airflow in CFM (cubic feet per minute), established noise level (sone) ratings, and created certification programs that allowed building codes to reference verifiable, third-party-tested performance data. HVI certification — the familiar HVI seal found on range hood packaging — became the industry standard for performance claims and remains the governing certification program for the North American residential ventilation market today.

The Ductless Hood and Activated Charcoal Filtration (1970s)

Through the 1960s, virtually every residential range hood sold in the United States was a ducted model: it required a sheet metal or flexible duct penetrating the wall or ceiling to carry exhaust air to the building exterior. This constraint limited range hood installation to locations where ductwork routing was feasible — generally exterior kitchen walls or ceilings with accessible attic or soffit space.

The rapid expansion of apartment and condominium construction in American cities during the 1960s and 1970s created a large and underserved market: kitchens in multi-unit buildings where exterior duct penetration was impractical, structurally constrained, or prohibited by building management. The ductless — or recirculating — range hood was developed for this market. Ductless hoods filter air in two stages and return it to the kitchen rather than exhausting it outdoors. The first stage is the familiar aluminum mesh grease filter; the second stage is an activated charcoal (activated carbon) filter that adsorbs cooking odors, smoke compounds, and volatile organic compounds that the aluminum mesh cannot capture. Activated charcoal has a finite adsorption capacity and must be periodically replaced — typically every three to six months under normal residential cooking conditions, or sooner in households that cook frequently at high heat.

The Baffle Filter and Professional-Grade Residential Hoods (1980s–2000s)

European range hood manufacturers, particularly those with deep sheet metal fabrication expertise, developed and refined the baffle filter as an engineering improvement over the aluminum mesh grease filter. Rather than a woven mesh, baffle filters use a series of precision-formed angled metal channels. As cooking vapors pass through the channels, forced directional changes in the airstream cause grease droplets — which are heavier than air and cannot make sharp turns as quickly — to impact and adhere to the baffle channel surfaces. This mechanical separation principle offers measurably higher range hood grease capture efficiency than mesh filtration, maintains better airflow as grease accumulates, and produces a filter that is fully dishwasher-safe and indefinitely reusable. By the 1980s, baffle filters were standard equipment in European residential range hoods and in premium commercial hood applications.

In the American residential market, baffle filters became available in premium hoods through the 1990s and found their largest audience in a new product category that transformed American kitchen design: the professional residential range. Beginning in the mid-1980s, the first ranges designed to bring the power and performance of commercial cooking equipment — high-BTU burners, heavy-gauge construction, commercial-grade controls — to the residential kitchen created strong demand for range hoods that could handle higher grease and vapor loads, accelerating adoption of baffle filter designs and larger, higher-CFM hood configurations in American homes.

The Range Hood Today

Today, the residential range hood is a standard fixture in virtually every American kitchen. The industry is served by manufacturers across the United States, Italy, China, South Korea, and beyond, with products ranging from builder-grade aluminum-housing ducted hoods to architectural statement pieces with custom stainless or glass finishes costing several thousand dollars. HVI certification remains the authoritative standard for performance verification in the North American market. NFPA standards continue to govern commercial cooking ventilation, and residential building codes in most jurisdictions reference minimum ventilation requirements for kitchen spaces.

Despite nearly a century of product development, the aluminum mesh grease filter — first refined during the American postwar housing boom of the late 1940s and 1950s — remains the most widely installed range hood filter technology in the United States. Washable, reusable, manufacturable to precise dimensional tolerances by precision machining, and highly effective at its core purpose, the aluminum mesh grease filter is found in tens of millions of American homes. Its endurance as the dominant residential range hood filter for more than 70 years is a testament to the elegance of the original engineering: a simple structure that captures what it needs to capture, withstands regular cleaning, and lasts for years of hard use without requiring periodic replacement.

Why Order from Range Hood Filters Inc.?

You are buying directly from American Metal Filter Company — the manufacturer. Range Hood Filters Inc. is the retail website of American Metal Filter Company, which has been manufacturing range hood filters in the U.S.A. for more than 40 years. These are genuine American Metal Filter Company products, not aftermarket copies.

When you order through Range Hood Filters Inc., you get:

• 40+ years of manufacturing expertise — filters built to precision-machined specs, not rebranded imports
• Made in the U.S.A. — every filter manufactured domestically to consistent quality standards
• Hundreds of filter models in stock — one of the largest in-stock inventories of range hood replacement filters available anywhere
• Fast shipping — most orders ship the same or next business day
• Free shipping on qualified orders
• Free 30-day returns — if it’s not the right fit, return it at no cost