Are you looking for an air-conditioning alternative?

What is a Whole house fan?

A Whole house fan is designed to efficiently remove a substantial amount of hot air from the home and replace it with fresh, cooler air from outside.  While this might not be a direct replacement for air-conditioning it will significantly reduce air-conditioning costs through a number of main objectives:

How does a Whole house fan differ from air-conditioning?

  1. The Whole house fan quickly (10-15 minutes) extracts hot air that has built up in the home during the day, this occurs due to the home being closed throughout the day which significantly builds up heat. Over the course of the day with windows being closed and blinds open sunlight filters into the home making it substantially hotter than outside temperatures.

  1. The Whole house fan cools the thermal mass, a process which cool air runs over the walls, ceiling and floors taking the heat out of the building structure lowering the amount of heat that continues to radiate from the structure well into the night
  2. Reducing radiant heat helps reduce and can eliminate the need for air-conditioning.  By cooling the thermal mass of the home it lowers the radiant heat that continues to enter the space, meaning your air-conditioning (if needed) doesn’t need to work as hard to maintain a cooler home.
  3. The whole house fan cools a person on a hot day, its like offering a “breeze”throughout the home. Similar to the way a fan cools.
  4. Whole house fan has significantly less running costs, using the Whole house fan the entire summer would still only be a fraction of the cost of running air-conditioning.
  5. Whole house fan replaces old stale air, the Australian Government website outlines that the majority of Australian homes internally has 5x more pollutants than outside.  A daily 10 minute replenish of old stale air from the home will improve the air quality https://www.environment.gov.au/protection/air-quality/indoor-air 

 

https://www.theaustralian.com.au/business/business-spectator/why-evaporative-cooling-is-bad-for-energy-efficient-homes/news-story/b5d0267fb339a002b1fbe62387a4d95e

Interested in more ventilation options, such as solar roof ventilation? Call the team at Solatube on 13 16 19

4 thoughts on “What is a Whole house fan

  1. Building a container home. Will have insulated ceiling with only small gap to container roof and an insulated open sided over roof. No air-conditioning being considered but would like fan supported air exchange, any ideas from your products

    1. Hi June,

      The Whole House Fan requires a minimum of 800mm vertical clearance from top of ceiling joists to roof rafter – not sure how this would translate to clearances on your plans. Our solar powered roof ventilators (Solar Stars) are also worth considering, however in case of an open sided roof, I’d mainly look at our Enviromax range for most flexibility. These are roof mounted fans running on 240V that can be ducted to specific rooms or interior zones. Power consumption is still quite low. Have a chat with one of dealers in your local area for more detailed recommendations: https://solatube.com.au/solatube-premier-dealers/

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