Still running your air conditioner at night?
Well, you really don’t have to. And, you could be even MORE comfortable than you now are.
Running an air conditioner is expensive. Not only that, but the air just doesn’t feel as fresh or smell as good as the air outdoors — assuming you don’t live next door to an oil refinery or the Chicago Cubs.
Outdoor temps at night typically dip down to eighty degrees or less in the St. Louis area. Wouldn’t it be great if you could simply bring that cool air inside your house and shut-off that air conditioner from running all night?
Whole House Fan Vs Air Conditioning
There’s another way to cool your house other than just air conditioning! You can do so with a “Whole House Fan,” the thing that many ERRONEOUSLY refer to as an “attic fan” (more about that later). You’ve probably seen a whole house fan, but may not have known it. Ever been in someone’s hallway, and notice on the ceiling a big square vent-looking thing with louvers? Yep, you need one of those. When that fan runs, the louvers open up, it sucks in air through all the open windows and doors, pulls this air throughout the house, then pushes the house’s existing air through the vents in your attic. This keeps your home cool and comfortable, and at a fraction of the cost of running your air conditioner. For this reason, we recommend using a whole house fan to keep your home cool at night.
Now, you’d never want to run a whole house fan at the same time as your air conditioner. All that air you’d be paying to cool would be shot out of the house and into the atmosphere by the whole house fan!
However, an ‘attic fan’ is a completely different kettle of fish. That’s a fan that some people have in their roof or gables that sucks hot air out of the attic, not out of a home’s living space. It keeps the ceiling of your upstairs cooler so that your air conditioner doesn’t have to work as hard. So, you CAN run an attic fan at the same time as your air conditioner.
Here at Fix St Louis, we’re big fans of whole house fans. They cut down on our customers’ air conditioning bills, allowing them to start using their air conditioners later in the year (or just less in general)!
As you know, the best things in life are free. That includes not just the outside cool air I’ve been talking about, but also getting an estimate from Fix St Louis. Got heating or cooling questions? Contact us today and find out how much it costs to put a whole house fan — and cool night air — in your home!