Anyone have a whole house fan?

mommy2allyandaveri

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This will be our first summer in a 2 story house and I am terrified of what our electic bill is going to be this summer. I'm also worried about keeping my girls cool upstairs. It gets hot here, but does cool down in the evening. It seems like people who have a whole house fan love them.

Do you have one?

What type?

Single story or 2 story?

Do you remember what it cost?
 
We used to have a whole house fan in our old house (in MI) and we had A/C. Some nights we ran both as it did get hot upstairs, but our fan was on a timer, so we would run it to just pull some of the cooler night air in about an hour before the kids went to bed. It is nice in teh spring and fall, crack the windows and it will pull fresh eveing air in! Last summer we moved to WA, no whole house fan. We are actually talking about getting one installed, especially since we have no a/c here.
 
My parents have one. We don't use it very much becaues the house it pretty good at keeping cool, but sometimes if we are going to be upstairs a lot. It's a split level. The only bad thing is that it blew out the pilot light on our water heater!!
 
We had one in our previous house, and boy did I love it! (no AC)
We had a 2 story house.
I don't think it made much if any difference on our electric bill. as we rarely left in running for hrs

It's great to remove hot air out of the attic, and pull cool air in.

For it to work properly, close your upstairs windows.
Open your downstairs windows and turn the fan on.
It will pull the cool air into the house from downstairs and push the hot attic air out.
You'll find the downstairs will cool quickly.

Next, you can close up downstairs and open selective or all windows upstairs- assuming the night air has cooled. The more windows you have open, the less "pull" of air comes in them.
That's why you should do downstairs and up seperately.

Since 2nd floors always get hotter, they take longer to cool.

Another trick, if it's still too hot to pull in air from outside, just turn the fan on for a while with nothing open. It will push the hot attic air out, which will help cool it faster once you're ready to pull in the night air.

Ours was loud- perhaps newer ones are softer. Because of that, I'd rarely leave it on for long- I did not want to go to sleep without being able to hear house noises.
Plus, once we cooled it down, the ceiling fans were all we needed.
Gosh I loved that fan...
 

If you have a fireplace DO NOT TURN IT OUT WITH EVERYTHING CLOSED!!!! My DH one day had a slight lapse in his memory and turned it on before opening a window. I had a black mess all over my living room into the hallway.

We had a ranch and it was very loud. We would use it during the day to cool the house off, but never left it on for very long. We also had AC, so we used it mostly in the spring and fall.
 
We had an attic fan in our old house in SC. The house was built in the 50's, no A/C. It was amazing how bearable it made some of the SC summers. We could get quite a wind going through the house.
 
We installed one about 3 summers ago and what a difference it makes in our 2 story 1920's (no insullation in the walls) home.

Our attic has windows on each side of the house and it never really cooled off the attic which kept the whole house hot. We installed the fan above one of the windows and we crack open the other side and it makes the attic bearable to be in. It has a thermostat on it so we can adjust when it goes on. I think we set it between 85-90 degrees. Sometimes it runs all day.
You can really feel the pull of the air when I crack the attic door a bit.

We also have central ac, but in an old house it really doesn't get the upstairs comfortable, but running the ac in conjunction with the attic fan has helped considerably. The electric bill is higher, but it's cheaper than the oil bill. LOL
 
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We have a 36 inch fan for a 2800 square foot two story house. I LOVE IT! Ours is over 20 years old and is losing some of its power, so I am going to try to replace it soon. I think I should be able to replace it for under $350. I feel it is well worth it. Running window AC's has GOT to be more than running one large fan.

Be careful that some people may confuse a whole house fan with an attic fan. The attic fan only pulls air into/out the attic. A whole house fan pulls air from the house and out the attic, cooling both.

DO NOT turn it on without opening up windows....it will pull the air from wherever it can...fireplace, furnace, etc. May not only create a mess, but might pull in noxious gases.
We live in CT and do not have AC. I am not a big AC fan, but the whole house fan runs A LOT during the summer months.

Make sure you do some research to find out what size you need for your size home. You will need an electrician if there is no wiring and no hole currently present to install.
 
We have one attached to our AC system - we can choose not to have the AC on, just whole house fan. We rarely use it, it just doesn't cool down the house at all. We have 2 stories, 4400 square feet, with 10-foot ceilings & 3 rooms of 20-foot ceilings, so that may very well be the problem. It just doesn't circulate the air well with all the high ceillings. We get much better air circulation with our ceiling fans. We use our AC A LOT and our electric bill isn't astronomical (now the gas bill to heat this house with all the high ceilings - OMG almost $700 a month!)
 
If you have a fireplace DO NOT TURN IT OUT WITH EVERYTHING CLOSED!!!! My DH one day had a slight lapse in his memory and turned it on before opening a window. I had a black mess all over my living room into the hallway.

We had a ranch and it was very loud. We would use it during the day to cool the house off, but never left it on for very long. We also had AC, so we used it mostly in the spring and fall.

Nice to know that I'm not the only one that happened to! :rotfl: I was cleaning up ashes forever......

OP- for what its worth, I've also heard of people breaking windows if they don't have at least one open to vent...
 
We have one attached to our AC system - we can choose not to have the AC on, just whole house fan. We rarely use it, it just doesn't cool down the house at all. We have 2 stories, 4400 square feet, with 10-foot ceilings & 3 rooms of 20-foot ceilings, so that may very well be the problem. It just doesn't circulate the air well with all the high ceillings. We get much better air circulation with our ceiling fans. We use our AC A LOT and our electric bill isn't astronomical (now the gas bill to heat this house with all the high ceilings - OMG almost $700 a month!)

I don't think that your one attached to the A/C is the same thing. A whole house fan is just a fan, placed in the highest place in the house (like the ceiling on the 2nd floor) and it should have louvers. When it is on, it sounds like a jet engine! There needs to be proper ventilation for the air that is sucked out of the house to be pushed out through (hope that makes sense!), those little vents in the soffits or similar.

We had one in a house we built in RI. It was great. Put that puppy on when we got home from work and the house cooled down very quickly.
 
We had one when I was growing up. I loved the sound of it as I went to sleep at night. When my parents had central heat/air put in the house, my dad still planned to use the fan at night when it was cooler. The AC man advised him not to. He said that part of the job of central AC is to keep the humidity down in the house. Running the fan at night would bring more moisture in the house. Then, the fan would work twice as hard the next day getting the moisture out, therefore saving nothing. However, I see that you're in California. Maybe you don't have high humidity. I lived in Alabama, which has very high humidity in the summer.
 
We moved into our current non-AC split level house in August 07. We were quite concerned about not having central air, but there is a whole house fan. We have quickly converted to loving the fan over AC. There are certainly times that it doesn't fully cool the house, no question. We installed one window unit in the kitchen area and one in the master bedroom. We ran them a few hours here and there for I'm guessing about 30 days. Overall though I was completely shocked at how well it does at keeping the house cool. It's loud white noise - nothing that had a negative impact on any of us sleeping.

As others have said, you can "target cool" a particular area by only opening windows in one room. As PP mentioned, don't run it in an entirely closed house that has a fireplace.

Our summer electric bill in this house (800 sq ft larger than our last one) ran about $50 mo. less through the summer compared to our AC house, so the fan must not use much electricity. I can't say enough good about it.
 
Another warning - don't leave your child's balloon from the restaurant roaming free in the downstairs family room when you turn your fan on upstairs. It found its way up two stair wells, and around a corner, and the ribbon wrapped around the fan! :scared1:

We love it. We leave it on when the evenings get cool, and my hubby turns it off around 5 am, and shuts all the windows. The house will stay cool until almost 4 in the afternoon before I have to use the AC.

When the evening lows don't get so low, it doesn't help as much.

We too are addicited to the white noise it provides for sleeping.
 
We have one and LOVE IT!

2900 sq ft. home with 2 story foyer. Works GREAT! My husband is handy, bought it from Home Depot and installed it himself. Its on 2nd floor 36" square and yes louvers. Only a few models run from $150-$200 approx 3 or 4 years ago.

BUT it can only cool down the house if it is cooler outside. You dont want to run it when its hot humid and bring that HH in the house. If the house heats up during the day and the night temps drop i run them to cool it down to sleep and we run it for a few hours.

The more doors shut on 1st floor the better. I make sure the basement door is shut, garage, windows etc, then open the windows upstairs and the air pull is much stronger.

During the summer days i use the AC with ceiling fans. But a ceiling fan doesnt compare at all to the house fan.

Unfortunately, i cant say if i save money. My guess is maybe a little because some neighbors will say it was so hot we left the AC on and i only ran the fan for a few hours.
 
The house we lived in before this had a whole house fan. It was already installed when we moved in, so I cannot help with the cost. It was mounted in the hall on the second floor. It did cool the house at night, but we still had the humidity to deal with. Also the doors had to be left open, so less privacy. We now have central air and we did not install a whole house fan.

There was stuff we liked and disliked about it.
 













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