It’s important that any home has adequate air circulation and ventilation. Circulation helps move air around the house to prevent any areas from feeling too hot or overly stuffy. Ventilation also matters since it helps draw stale air and airborne pollution outside, which makes a major difference in the home’s indoor air quality. In terms of air circulation and ventilation, whole-house fans are one of the most effective options. This article will look at how house fans work and what benefits this type of fan can provide to your home.
An Intro to Whole-House Fans and How They Work
A whole-house fan is a unique type of ventilation unit that works to replenish and refresh the air throughout the entire house. This type of fan is located inside the home’s attic and connected to an air vent in one of the ceilings. The vent is always located as centrally as possible to ensure that the fan can effectively draw in air from every part of the house.
The way that the fan works is by creating negative pressure inside the house so that it continually draws a large volume of air in and pumps it out into the attic. The air the fan draws in then gets vented outside through the attic vents. The fan only works properly if a few windows are slightly open to allow fresh air to get drawn into the house from outside. This process allows the fan to quickly exchange 100% of the air inside the house since it continually pulls stale air out and brings fresh air in.
A high-quality fan works so effectively that it will usually completely exchange all of the air inside the house in only three to four minutes. That means the fan will prevent the air from getting stale and stuffy while also continually removing any airborne pollutants and bacteria. It will also quickly eliminate any residual odors from cooking and keep your home smelling fresher and cleaner.
How a Whole-House Fan Helps Lower Air Conditioning Costs
A whole-house fan can also reduce how much you spend on electricity to keep your home cool. You obviously don’t want to have the fan running when it’s too hot outside since it would draw massive amounts of hot air in through the open windows and quickly increase your home’s temperature. Of course, you also never want to have your air conditioning running with any windows open since it’s a huge waste of energy.
While you usually won’t be able to use the fan during the daytime in the summer, you should be able to use it almost every evening. Even when sufficiently insulated, an attic can get extremely hot during the day. If it has proper ventilation, it will usually stay about the same as the outdoor temperature. Nonetheless, this is still typically much hotter than what you want your home to be. The fact that attics get so hot is why many houses will still continue heating up quite quickly in the evening, even after it has cooled down outside. This is because attics tend to be the biggest source of heat gain and are the reason why an AC system will continually have to keep turning on in the evening.
This is where a whole-house fan is extremely useful since it will quickly draw all of the heat out of the attic. If you turn it on as soon as the outdoor temperature has cooled down to your preferred indoor temperature, it will reduce how much your AC unit runs every day. You’ll also usually be able to rely almost solely on the fan in the spring and fall instead of needing to have your air conditioning running at times.
A whole-house fan works so effectively that it will cool your entire house far more quickly than your air conditioner ever could. If you turn on the fan when it’s 70 degrees outside and 80 degrees inside of your house, it won’t take much time at all before your home is also 70 degrees. The fan will also prevent your house from ever heating back up since it will eliminate all of the heat in the attic.
Using the fan in the morning before you leave for work will also make it so that your air conditioning doesn’t come on until much later in the day. Opening your windows at night helps to make your home cooler. Nonetheless, you’ll often wake up with your house still being slightly warmer than the outdoor temperature since open windows only cool the surrounding area. If you sleep with your windows open and then run the fan in the morning, you’ll quickly make your house far cooler before you leave.
Let’s say that it’s 60 degrees when you wake up in the morning. If you run the fan for even just 10-15 minutes, you’ll end up cooling your house down to 60 degrees and also ensure that the attic is cool. That means that your air conditioning usually won’t start running until sometime in the afternoon. If your home was 65 degrees or so when you left, your AC unit would usually come on a few hours earlier.
How to Make the Most of a House Fan
One thing to understand is that you never want to have more than a few windows open when a house fan is running. Having too many windows open will prevent the fan from creating the negative air pressure it needs to pull in a sufficient volume of air and cool your attic and home as quickly. That’s why you need to be strategic about which windows you have open.
The best way to use the fan is to start in the rooms you use the most in the evening, such as the living room and kitchen. That means opening the windows in these rooms first so that they quickly get cooled. You especially want to have the windows in your kitchen cracked when cooking so that the fan draws out any odors and the heat from your stove or oven.
You’ll want to leave the windows open in the areas you’re using until you’re fully cool and comfortable. That basically means until the outdoor temperature drops below your preferred indoor temperature so that you don’t get too cold. At this point, you then want to open the windows in your bedrooms so that they get sufficiently cool before everyone goes to sleep. When this happens, you can then just shut off the fan until the morning.
Another thing to note is that most fans have a high and low setting. You always want to start running the fan on high so that it draws all of the heat out of your attic more quickly. This will usually only take around 30 minutes, after which you can turn the fan to low so that it runs more quietly and uses less energy.
Environmental Heating & Air Solutions is the most trusted source for house fan installation in Roseville, Benicia, and the surrounding areas. We install high-quality QuietCool house fan systems. Our team will ensure that your fan is the right size so that it works as effectively as possible. Give us a call today for more information on the benefits of installing a whole-house fan or if you need any air conditioning, heating, indoor air quality, or plumbing service.
