At Purl’s Sheet Metal & Air Conditioning, we’re always looking for ways to grow and offer new services to benefit our customers. Recently, we started to offer installation of whole-house fans. Although whole-house fans aren’t actually a new invention—they were popular in the 1950s and ‘60s before central AC was common in homes—they’ve made a comeback because they provide an energy-saving way of cooling and providing better ventilation throughout a house.
If you’d like to know more about what goes into installing a whole-house fan, or if you want to schedule an appointment to see if your home will benefit from one of these systems, feel free to give us a call.
Some details on how a whole-house fan works
A whole-house fan is usually installed in the attic. The powerful fan draws the air from the rooms below and into the attic, where a difference in pressure forces this air through vents to the outdoors. Drawing all this air into the attic creates a negative pressure difference throughout the rest of the house, meaning that air from elsewhere must rush in to replace the air drawn into the attic. This air comes in through the windows.
When used at times when the outside air is cooler than the inside air (such as in the morning or evening) this air exchange will result in a drop in indoor temperatures that is evenly distributed throughout the rooms. For cooler (but not cold) parts of the year, such as fall and spring, a whole-house fan can provide enough cooling to serve as a substitute for running the AC.
Please note that a whole-house fan is different from what are called attic fans or attic ventilators. These installations are only designed to vent out the heated air trapped in the attic to bring down the attic’s temperature. A whole-house fan moves air from the rest of the house and vents it out through the attic, thus providing complete air exchange and lower temperatures for every room in the home.
Purl’s Sheet Metal & Air Conditioning serves Madera, CA and the rest of the Central Valley with comfort and indoor air quality services. We’re on call 7 days a week.