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A WHOLE HOUSE FAN is a large fan mounted in a venturi housing and is installed in the attic. They are used to both cool and ventilate a house.
| A whole house fan is able to cool your house in 3 ways: |
- They draw cooler outside air in through your open windows which lowers the room temperature by as much as 10 to 20 degrees F. Your open windows serve as intake “vents” which allow you to control the air flow by selecting how many or which windows you open.
- The moving air blowing through the house cools the occupants. The cooling breeze can lower the skin temperature by 5 to 10 degrees F.
- The cooler air, after passing through the living space, is forced into the attic which pushes the hot attic air out through the attic vents. This can lower the attic air temperature by as much as 40 degrees F. The attic can reach temperatures in excess of 150 degrees F. in summer, and that air, if allowed to remain undisturbed, will radiate heat down through the insulation to heat the living space. That is the main reason that a home, without the use of a whole house fan, remains uncomfortably warm in summer evenings, and that the upper floor of a multi-floor house is always warmer.
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Whole house fans are rated according to the amount of air they can move. This is measured in cubic feet of air per minute, or CFM. In order to be effective, a whole house fan’s CFM rating should be 2 to 3 times the square footage of the house. For example, a 1,500 square foot house should have a whole house fan system capable of 3,000 to 4,500 CFM. Overall attic venting is the only limiting factor on how many CFM can be efficiently moved. However, attic venting can be easily increased. Too many CFM for the attic venting can cause undue stress on the whole house fan and pressurizes the attic and walls. Too little CFM will not provide the desired minimum of 10 air exchanges per hour as recommended by the House Ventilation Institute, and may not provide the cooling draft to lower house, attic, and skin temperatures in a timely fashion. |
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What is the difference between whole house cooling and air conditioning? |
| Whole house cooling brings outside
air into your home to cool it, while flushing out the
warm air and ventilating the house at the same time. Air
conditioning takes the existing inside air and keeps recycling
it and cooling it slightly each time it is recycled. No
stale air is removed in the process. |
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| Can I use both an air conditioner
and a whole house fan? |
| YES, definitely, but not at the
same time. The whole house fan should be used when the
outside air temperature is cooler than the inside temperature.
The air conditioner when the reverse is true. Normally,
the whole house fan in the evening, night and early morning
hours, and the air conditioner during the heat of the
day. |
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| Why is ventilation important? |
Effective ventilation is a process that keeps the air circulating and exchanges the over-heated and moisture-laden air in your house with cooler air from outside. Most homes built today are sealed tight during the construction process and allow almost no air infiltration. This is efficient for heating and air-conditioning a home (heating and air-conditioning systems recirculate the same old, inside air over and over again) but makes it all the more necessary to ventilate. Without ventilation, moisture, cooking odors, tobacco smoke, and other foul-smelling odors are locked into the house and cannot escape. Moisture in the air comes from everyday activities such as cooking, bathing, laundering, and even breathing. Moisture that is allowed to remain in a closed house can create many problems for the homeowner. The most serious is mold growth, which can seriously threaten the health of all the people in the house. Mildew is another problem, which is usually encountered around showers and laundry facilities. The moisture in these areas generally causes problems with peeling paint and wallpaper, but under the surface, structural damage may be taking place. Moisture can also be present in the attic and this dampness can deteriorate the insulation and also cause structural damage.
| Did You Know? |
- Doctors are now recognizing that “sick” homes can damage people’s health and vitality, decrease their productivity, increase their health costs, and reduce home values.
- Today’s homes contain over 1,500 hazardous compounds from approximately 3,000 man-made products. Even low levels of pollutants emitted by these products will affect human health over a period of months or even years.
- The EPA recently rated indoor air pollution as one of the five most urgent environmental issues, accounting for over $1 billion annually in direct health care costs and up to $60 billion annually in lost productivity.
- A 1999 Mayo Clinic study associated nearly all of the chronic sinus infections afflicting 37 million Americans with molds. Recent studies also have linked toxic molds to the tripling of the asthma rate over the past 20 years.
- The EPA has stated that 50%of all illnesses are caused or aggravated by indoor air pollution.
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A whole house fan is by far the best method of providing ventilation for the whole house. Every time a whole house fan is operated, it draws the foul air within the house up into the attic and then forces it out of the attic through the attic vents . |
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| Quietcool of The Inland Empire |
| Ph- |
888.784.3826 |
| Fax- |
951.325.6350
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| Em- |
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