Soak the aluminium mesh filters flat in hot water with a non-caustic degreaser rather than a dishwasher. Filters frequently cross-reference under Ariston, Indesit, Hotpoint and IKEA, so measure the part before concluding a replacement is unavailable.
Whirlpool hoods reach Australian kitchens mostly through developers rather than showrooms, which shapes their condition more than their engineering does.
Developer fit-outs and the age they imply
A Whirlpool hood in an apartment is as old as the building's kitchen, not as old as the room looks. If the block went up in 2013, that is the appliance's age regardless of how new the joinery appears, and it has run under however many owners or tenants have passed through since.
Apartments change hands every few years, and each owner reasonably assumes the last one had the kitchen serviced. Nobody had. A hood never fails outright, it just extracts less each year, so there is no point in that chain where anyone was forced to act.
Treat a Whirlpool hood in an apartment as untouched unless you have specific reason to think otherwise.
Parts under several names
Because Whirlpool owns Ariston, Indesit and Hotpoint and builds IKEA's appliances, hood filters frequently cross-reference. Filters lose their labels faster than any other component in a kitchen, so measuring and searching by dimension across those names is considerably more productive than searching one badge.
Recirculating in apartments
Ducting outside is often impossible in a multi-storey building, so many of these recirculate and carry a charcoal filter behind the metal ones, replaced every six to twelve months and never washed. An original one means the hood is doing nothing about odour.
The general method is on our rangehood cleaning guide.
Where the smell comes from
If a Whirlpool hood still smells once the filters have been soaked, what is causing it sits behind them.
Everything the filters miss is thrown against the fan housing by the impeller and bakes into a hard brown lacquer, which warms every time the fan runs. It is also what puts the fan out of balance, turning a quiet hood into one that hums and then rattles, and what reduces extraction, because a loaded impeller moves less air than a clean one.
Isolate the power at the wall or the circuit breaker before anything goes near it. In an apartment the switch is frequently inside a cupboard or on a distant wall rather than beside the appliance, so find it properly rather than assuming.
What actually goes wrong
A hood never opened across two or three owners.
An original charcoal filter in a recirculating install.
A parts search under one badge when the filter is listed under another.
Should you do it yourself?
Do it yourself for the filters, starting with establishing whether there is a charcoal one behind them.
Get someone in for the impeller housing, or alongside the Whirlpool oven and Whirlpool cooktop.