Air Vent Inc. 24" Whole House Fan 54301 Attic & Whole House Fans

You might be wondering if a WH fan makes any sense in the southeast. I'll give you some brief thoughts on that but first a quick review of this fan.This fan works as advertised. It's a basic dynamic drive fan with a pull chain to control the power and the speed. The louvers look kind of cheap but they get the job done. If you want something higher end, there's belt driven fans and nicer louvers and ducted fans but be prepared to shell out at least 3 times as much.As others have said this fan is relatively quiet. Where the problem lies for mine, is with the rattling of a couple of the louvers and I'm working on a fix for that. If it weren't for the rattling, on low speed the noise level is about like your clothes dryer running. On high it is much louder but that is the tradeoff. I've gotten used to it.Despite what the description says and what the fairly straight forward 2 pages of instructions may have you believe, this is NOT a do it yourself installation for the lay person. I repeat, this is definitely NOT a job for the do-it-yourselfer. It took 2 electricians and a carpenter working non-stop like dogs for 4 hours to get this thing installed. I stood there watching and it was a colossal project. I do have an above average home repair experience level and a virtual home depot in the garage but something told me not to do this myself. The joists in this house are spaced at 24 inch centers and even though the instructions say not to cut any joists, there was no other way to do it.I didn't see anyone mention what they were using for switches. I highly recommend the Woods 59013 Decora Style 8-4-2-1 Hour Electronic timer that I also got here at Amazon. You don't need any other switches. The Woods timer turns the fan on/off and trust me, you will want it to turn off automatically and a timer is priceless for that. I still use the pull chain to control the speed. I bought a rheostat fan switches but didn't end up using it.You may be reading some conflicting reports of where to place the fan and whether it will or won't work around corners. I can tell you for a fact that it most certainly WILL work around corners and even in other rooms. Ours went in an upstairs laundry room and is out of sight but used with the door to the laundry room open.Getting a WH fan to do the desired cooling may take a little bit of trial and error. In a nutshell, the more windows you open, the less air will be drawn through each window and the longer it will take for all the rooms where windows are opened to cool down. The fewer windows you have open in the house, the more air will be drawn through the windows and the room or rooms with the window(s) opened will cooler faster. If you take this particular fan and only one window in this house (~3300 sf) is opened, there will be a gale force wind coming through that window. Which, I'm not gonna lie... is flippin awesome. But again, only that one room is going to cool down if you do that. You'll have to share the breeze with others in the house if you want those other rooms to cool down too. And the rooms with windows open, the less breeze for everyone and the slower the cooling will be for all of the rooms involved.As for winter heat loss, you might try winterizing the fan by shutting down power to the fan, taking a sheet of styrofoam and cutting out an opening for the fan and placing a few of those on top over the fan. The louver on this fan is not insulated in any way.I'm using mine in the Atlanta area and while the southest or east coast in general really isn't the climate for a WH fan, if you can adapt to and tolerate high indoor humidity levels and concede that there will be many nights where you cannot use the fan, no matter how badly you want to, and have realistic expectations, you will enjoy using it and it will save you money on your energy bills over using air conditioning. In the southeast, WH fans are not an air conditioning replacement. Although my father had one when he was growing up and they didn't have a/c.Here are some of the realities with WH fans in the southeast...- Finding someone to install one.Half the contractors (I'm talking electricians and HVAC contractors) have never even heard of WH fans, let alone installed one. If you call around, 99% of them are going to say, "You mean an attic fan?"- The relatively short period of time, you can use the fan each year for a reasonable amount of cooling that would otherwise be done with an air conditioner.There needs to be at least a 5-7 degrees cooler temperature outside to get any kind of cooling inside. After that point, the cooling plateaus and the inside temp is always going to be several degrees higher than outside. Here in the piedmont, on a good year, we can go up to late june before the a/c has to be run all night long. If the temperature outside is 68 degrees or higher, it's just not going to eliminate the need for a/c. And as we get into july and august, the low temps can be in the mid 70's and extremely humid. The evening temperatures after the sun goes down can remain in the 80's and 90's until very late at night. A WH Fan is not going to help you on those days. If you're only concerned with one room and it's still kind of hot outside at night, the cooling breeze that will come through the windows will help your body cool naturally. Just picture yourself laying on a hammock on the beach. But for the months of May, Sept and parts of April, June and October, if you're lucky, you can go freon-free if you can adapt to and tolerate the higher indoor humidity levels as well as getting in the routine of opening and closing windows when needed. If you think you will want to do that, then this fan will save you money and you will enjoy using it. If not, then you may want to try something else to save energy such as planting more trees around your home and spot cooling specific rooms with portable units, oscillating fans, wearing loose fitting clothes and all the usual stuff.- Bugs.My father warned me about bugs getting sucked in through the window screens and I didn't want to believe that that was actually possible but I hate to say it but he was kinda right. Depending on how many windows are opened in the house and how many bugs are out, they will be drawn to the window by the draft. Some of the smallest ones can get in the house somehow. That wouldn't stop me from getting one but just make sure your screens are in good shape and there are no rips in them or bends in the frame. Another problem is odors from nearby neighbors and rain getting sucked in but that's not limited to the southeast.-Humidity. Some people like it. Some people don't. While a dehumidifier can be used to dry out the house, they also add heat and consume around the same amount electricity as a portable air conditioner. So if you do that, you might as well just use an air conditioner. This is probably a non issue for those of you out west but on the east coast, it's going to be humid, you can count on that.Even with the drawbacks, the WH fan makes it possible to be reasonably comfortable in this house without using the A/C on enough days where I could see it easily paying for itself in one year worth of energy savings. Probably a lot more considering the home's a/c units are starting to become costly to repair each year and their life may be extended so that they won't have to be replaced before the house is sold as we plan to relocate in 2-3 years.

My house is old, the air conditioning unit is from the early 80's. It works well but it is so very expensive to run. It's not uncommon for our electric bills to be $600+ in the hottest months (4 bedroom single story home...and we close off the vents to 2 of the rooms). Thats just not ok, replacing the a/c unit is costly, installing a swamp cooler would create humidity, no thanks...so we opted for this fan and are glad we did.I had it installed professionally, my handyman charged me $75 to install it, it took him about 2 hours. We installed it during spring time, it would get warm in the house but not hot or uncomfortable. At first I was somewhat regretting the fan, it was expensive, noisy and I didn't feel much of a difference. THEN Summer decided to come in fast, full heat and my house felt like a furnace, but the evening air outside felt wonderful....that was the first time I felt what this fan could do and it was worth every penny. We opened the front door and one window at the back of the house, within about 30 minutes I actually got a little shiver cause I was cold. It cooled our whole house down within that 30 minutes. My house seems to "bake" throughout the day during Summer time, it can be 100 degrees outside but not that bad inside. Then around 5-6pm the heat seeps into the house and it's almost unbearable. Thats also about the same time the air outside starts to cool down so that is when the fan goes on. I cannot say it enough, it works so good!It is noisy, when we turn it on high the cats scatter and our conversations are shouted like we're standing under an airplane. We run it on high for about 20 minutes and then turn it to low for the rest of the evening. On low it's a lot quieter, you can still hear it running and rattling a little bit but we don't even notice it since we're watching TV. Our conversations return to regular speaking levels and all is good.This fan has not affected my electric bill too much. During non-warm months my bill runs about $90, since running this fan every evening for 3 weeks the bill was $110. That is an acceptable increase considering running my a/c would of been hundreds of dollars more. We'll still need the a/c this summer when it gets so hot that even the evening air is hot but it will cut that down to just 1 or 2 months instead of 4 to 5.