Fans in the House – Part 1

There was a time (believe it or not) when electric fans did not exist! You can look it up. Seems the earliest electric fan was a product of the fertile imagination of Dr. Schuyler Skaats Wheeler in 1886. And that must be true because I read about it on the Internet. I can’t confirm it personally.

Before electric fans, heat purposely moved around the house by convective flows. The stack effect sucked air in at the bottom of the house and pushed it out through leaks at the top. Floor grates and very large diameter ducts were installed to encourage the heat flow. There were no fans. Just natural heat flow.

Convection was also used for ventilation. You might have seen a spy listening through the transom to a conversation in Sam Spade’s office. Those transoms were there for ventilation and heat movement.

But when electricity and electric fans were introduced, they could take the place of convective flows to push the air around. So how many fans do you have in your house?

• If you heat and cool with a conditioned air system, that blower counts as a fan;
• Fan in the bathroom? Count those.
• Range hood? That’s a fan too.
• If you have a central vacuum, that has a fan in it.
• Gable end or roof fan in the attic?
• Whole house comfort ventilator (commonly referred to as a whole house fan)?
• Clothes dryer? Yup. There’s a fan in there. (There might be a second fan in the ducting to boost the flow.)
• If you have a radon system, that might have a fan in the attic to boost the flow.
• If you have a window air conditioner or mini-split air conditioner, they certainly have fans in them.
• How about ceiling fans?
• Computers used to have fans in them and some still do.

I just counted the installed or semi-installed (window air conditioner) fans in my house and came up with 14. I didn’t count the pedestal or ‘tower’ fans we use in the summer in particularly uncomfortable places.

So count up the fans you have in your house, and next month we’ll start looking at them individually.

Bookshop.org

Here are some interesting books from my newsletter. And some others!