We just got a whole house fan installed in our new place, and it's the only cooling we have (no swamp cooler, no central air). While the upstairs was cooler this morning than it's been since we moved in, I have to say that it wasn't quite as cool as I was hoping it would be.
Granted, it's been HOT up there during the day -- probably getting up to the mid-80s in the late afternoon, and then cooling down to about 75 overnight with some aggressive window-fan placement. Given that, this morning's 68ish was really lovely, though since the low was around 60 I was hoping for a bit more.
So, I guess my questions are, for those of you with whole house fan experience -
Roughly how much cooling do you see overnight, relative to the max temp your home gets to during the day? Is it reasonable to expect that the interior temp will get close to the overnight low by around 6am? I'm also hoping that now that the upstairs is cooler, we'll get better results in the future -- in other words, the upstairs won't get to 85 today, since we're starting at 68 or so instead of 75 in the morning. Does that match other people's experience?
Any tips for the best window-opening strategies? We have 3 floors, each about 600 sq ft. The bottom floor is a basement that stays cool (hasn't gotten above 70 yet) without any fan intervention, so we can easily close the basement door at night and just worry about cooling the top 2 floors.
We're in Boulder, so the worst case is near 100 during the day and low 70s at night. More typical for the worst of the summer is high 80s during the day and low 60s at night.
Granted, it's been HOT up there during the day -- probably getting up to the mid-80s in the late afternoon, and then cooling down to about 75 overnight with some aggressive window-fan placement. Given that, this morning's 68ish was really lovely, though since the low was around 60 I was hoping for a bit more.
So, I guess my questions are, for those of you with whole house fan experience -
Roughly how much cooling do you see overnight, relative to the max temp your home gets to during the day? Is it reasonable to expect that the interior temp will get close to the overnight low by around 6am? I'm also hoping that now that the upstairs is cooler, we'll get better results in the future -- in other words, the upstairs won't get to 85 today, since we're starting at 68 or so instead of 75 in the morning. Does that match other people's experience?
Any tips for the best window-opening strategies? We have 3 floors, each about 600 sq ft. The bottom floor is a basement that stays cool (hasn't gotten above 70 yet) without any fan intervention, so we can easily close the basement door at night and just worry about cooling the top 2 floors.
We're in Boulder, so the worst case is near 100 during the day and low 70s at night. More typical for the worst of the summer is high 80s during the day and low 60s at night.