What works best for cooling a room - fan pointing in or fan pointing out?

[6]

Down here in the stifling south we figured it out a long time ago.  Old "cracker" houses were vented at the top and bottom which allowed hot air to escape and be replaced by cooler air sucked from the shaded lower levels of the house.  Go buy a special window fan which has movable sides to fill all the window space.  Don't just stick a regular fan in a window, it'll just suck hot air in thru the window around the sides of the fan.

Put the fan on exhaust and open all doors to the cooler lower levels, but close all other windows in the room and on the upper floor if possible.  Otherwise you'll just suck in more hot air.

Stay warm.

6


ps: search "cracker house" for a better description of how it works.

[Fade]

What works best for cooling a room - fan pointing in or fan pointing out?

@ Sumner

Fan pointing in.
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Sorry not correct.
By blowing the air into the room, you are at the same time blowing the heat from the fan motor into the room.

By blowing it out, this extra heat never gets mixed with the room air.

[T_Bone]

6 wrote:
Down here in the stifling south we figured it out a long time ago.  Old "cracker" houses were vented at the top and bottom which allowed hot air to escape and be replaced by cooler air sucked from the shaded lower levels of the house.  Go buy a special window fan which has movable sides to fill all the window space.  Don't just stick a regular fan in a window, it'll just suck hot air in thru the window around the sides of the fan.

Put the fan on exhaust and open all doors to the cooler lower levels, but close all other windows in the room and on the upper floor if possible.  Otherwise you'll just suck in more hot air.

Stay warm.

6


ps: search "cracker house" for a better description of how it works.

 :-)

My Garage is a converted Cracker House. one big fan from Graingers in the attic pointed out, screen door on lower level left open. Whole building is a tunnel of cool air fron the lower level blowing out at the attic level.

A neat thing they do in the middle east, they suspend a piece of canvas above the roof to block the sun, and since the canvas is suspended above the roof, the heat from the sun hitting the canvas just blows away, rather than heating the roof.

[Fade]

@ T_Bone
"A neat thing they do in the middle east, they suspend a piece of canvas above the roof to block the sun, and since the canvas is suspended above the roof, the heat from the sun hitting the canvas just blows away, rather than heating the roof."
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Hundred year old houses in the south are designed to work the same way.

High, steep angled roofs with large vents high on the gables allow the heat to escape before the attic heats up enough to transfer into the living space of the house.

Ever see a mobile home with an extra roof about two feet above the mobile home's flat roof and extending out a few feet past the sides? It's an indication the owner knows it will keep it cooler while at the same time protecting the home's flat roof from the eventual leaks they all get. There are quiet a few vacation houses like that at a large lake nearby

[Floid]

For what it's worth, we cool an entire apartment (when it truly needs it) with a 1.8kw AC that runs on far less than a 50% duty cycle after the place has cooled down.  *If* your local power is nuclear, there's theoretically no reason not to if you can afford it... except for the fact that the nukes and grid can't keep up with the load and they still end up having to drag out the 'emergency' dino-burning generators.

(Of course, the nuke plants do dump waste heat, too, hmm...)

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[Insert memory of being 'kind' and setting the AC up to 76 after the first 'blip' that heralded last summer's collapse... of course, if everyone else had done the same, I gather we probably still would've been screwed.]