Whole House Fan recommendations

[Malcom "Mal" Reynolds]

I'll be getting one of those fancy state of California utility approved audits and I'm sure they'll be hitting all of my buttons. They may well give me a whole house fan covered by tax credits and rebates, which is fine, but their website mentions using a Tamarack fan. I've done some research and the pros are it's nice and small, well insulated, easy to install and use, low energy use and it's possible they can install it in my "office" wall which is on the other side of the house so it will be quiet. The cons are that it has a pretty low CFM (approx

1500), using it in the wall won't help remove the heat from the attic, and, well it just looks cheesy.

My house is 800/1000 square feet and I'm presently using two floor fans that most of the time do the job, but are noisy and do use considerably more energy than a Tamarack would.

So if any of you have relevant comments that I can arm myself against the inevitable sales pitch, I'd gladly welcome them.

Personally I'd love something that gets around 2-3 thousand CFM, but as I'll undoubtedly end up being gifted with new windows and weatherizing, maybe the Tamarack will be sufficient

Side Note: if anyone has any comments about Brower Mechanical, that would be nice also

[RickH]

You will only get the CFM that your roof is vented to allow. If you have mushroom vents you have to count them and add up the square inches of vent area, also add in the square inches of vent are you have in any ridge or soffit vents. Your fan can only move as much air as the vents will allow to escape. If you buy "too big" of a fan you will be wasting power for no reason because the back pressure will not accomodate the flow anyway. I unfortunately have "too big" of a fan when I run it at full speed, but at low speed it is just right, the flow matches the vents. I just laid mine across the joists on 1 inch rubber foam so it would not transmit noise and vibration into the ceiling. Its belt drive and isolating the vibration from the house with foam made it run very quiet. Also you must open some widows elsewhere when running the WH fan or there will be no flow, or worse the air will get sucked from locations you dont want it sucked from (like through your house drain tile or plumbing vents or wall leaks) maybe sucking in odors. I'm happy having a WH fan though, good investment and nice quick way to refresh/changeout all the air in the house once in a while.