Whole House Fan: Vertical Mount OK?

[frank1492]

I have just purchased a Cape-style home with an unfinished second floor. I would like to mount a large fan in one of the windows of the second floor to pull air through the stair well from the first floor. Whenever I look at fan literature, I see whole-house fans and attic exhaust fans. The attic exhaust fans are usually quite small and have relatively small capacity. The whole-house fans, on the other hand, have much greater capacity, but are usually shown mounted in a horizontal position on an attic floor. (The Cape of course has no true attic.) What is wrong with mounting a whole house fan vertically in a window at the end of the second floor??? Or could two smaller capacity fans be mounted vertically, one in each of the two second-floor windows at opposite ends of the second floor? Help much appreciated. Frank

[Edwin Pawlowski]

Attic fans are designed to pull air through the hot attic only, not the capacity of a house. The whole house fans can be mounted in a window opening if it suites your needs better. Most house fans you see today are the cheap box fans that can sit on a window sill. Years ago, there were better made, higher capacity fans for window mounting just as you intend. Now they are harder to find.

4TM66 is probably something you could use.

[Joe Bobst]

Possibly a better idea. Most window sized fans would be aound 24" diameter to fit in a typical 28" or 30" window. Checking some whole house fan sizes you likely will see 30" commonly depending on your market area, difficult to fit in most windows. And beside the higher flow rate, it's nice to be able to shut one unit down to control air flow. HTH

Joe

[nicksanspam]

Grainger 4TM66 is probably something you could use.

Their $183 3C614 is also nice, and more efficient, moving 8908 cfm with

180 W (49 cfm/W) vs 3290 with 90 W (36 cfm/W) for the $73 4TM66.

Then again, a 2'x8' stairway door with a 24' height difference between basement windows and gable vents might move 16.6(2'x8')sqrt(24'x10F) = 4115 cfm with a 10 F indoor/outdoor temperature difference at night.

Nick

[Curmudgeon]

Every true whole house fan I have seen are a LOT larger than 24". They are at least 36" or more, have a large motor and a belt drive, and as you noted are designed to be mounted in an attic floor/2 nd floor ceiling. Anything that sits in a window is NOT going to pull air thru the entire house...at least not in any meaningful way. Now, I have seen these large fans mounted vertically in a sidewall/gable. You also see them mounted this way in factory/industrial settings where they function as exhaust fans.

[Nick Pine]

Are we talking romance or cfm? :-)

Nick

[Wayne Boatwright]

[e-mail] wrote in news:c5e3ab $ [e-mail]:

You might also consider something like this...

Wayne

[SQLit]

I grew up with one of these mounted in the upstairs window. It would actually help you up the stairs when running.

The only issue I can think of is all of the dust and garbage in the attic is going to be ejected by the fan. You will be pulling air from every where the fan can. Low pressure air is not exactly going to go where you want. If you were to open a window on the far side of the house the fan may pull more air through the attic than up from the living area. This is why the fans are usually mounted in the ceiling just above the living area. That way they pull only from the living area and push the cooler air into the attic cooling it. I have a 20 inch round industrial type fan $40 bucks from Costco with a remote control and a 9 incher as well. It is hung below the crawl space opening in the garage. I turn it on about a hour after dark and woke up to a home that was 67 degrees. It was 88 yesterday. Cooled to 62 last night. Best you going to do is outside plus 5-10 degrees. Not bad considering the cost. Hope it works out for you

[Heathcliff Bambino]

Well, I have one mounted at a 45-degree angle, and its fine . . . But I would go with the others who have recommended getting a fan designed to be mounted in a window. The whole-house fans are industrial looking and noisy, and they have no safety guards. You would have to build some sort of enclosure for it, and then take it down in winter perhaps. It would be better to get something made for your application.

[frank1492]

I thank you all for your suggestions. I have a friend who has a large, belt-driven fan in one of his attic windows and it works superbly. But it is a 30" fan and is only possible because it is an old house with very large windows that can accommodate 30" in the lower sash. My house can't do that. I am inclined not to be interested in fans that don't have shutters, which would eliminate the Air Kings. I simply don't want to have to close the window whenever a heavy rain storm is imminent. I will mull over your ideas now, and thanks again for all of them.! Frank

[nicksanspam]

Whoops. Their catalog numbers are wrong, as [e-mail] pointed out. Grainger's tech support people at 847 535 5400 give this:

4TM66 3290 1520 1235 cfm 84.1 70.9 57.0 W 39 21 22 cfm/W 3C614 7005 6165 4160 cfm 364 280 185 W 19 22 22 cfm/W

Looks like the $73 4TM66 is the price and efficiency winner, with a thermostat and reversibility, vs the $183 3C614.

Nick

[Michael.Lacy.junk]

My experience over the last 45 years has been quite different. In at least four different residences (two of which were two story, 4 BR houses), I have used a window-mount exhaust fan about 20-24" inches in diameter. If tightly installed, they move a lot of air, and make even warm and humid midwest nights relatively tolerable for sleeping. In my current dry/cool night climate, I run one for about 1/2 hour on summer nights, which is enough to drop the temperature of the house quite substantially.