Whole House Fan Uses Squirrel Cage Blower For Strong Air Flow

Online, August 7, 2010 (Newswire.com) - Kurt Shafer, the WholeHouseFanGuy on YouTube, has found a cost effective way to recycle old forced air unit blowers for use as whole house fans. The blowers are extremely powerful and will move air even when flow is impeded.

Each blower is tested thoroughly for AC input current and for CFM (Cubic feet per minute) air flow. Every blower must meet stringent criteria or it is not used. The blower output is recorded on each unit along with the input current in amps. For example, most blowers move at least 1500 CFM and draw just 5-6 amps at 110VAC. Kurt has tested blowers that move as much as 3000 CFM and do that at no more current than a hair drier takes from your bathroom wall outlet. (13 amps).

Each blower is equipped with a door that closes to prevent cold air from flowing down in the winter. Industrial AC cords are attached through an industrial junction box mounted on the case. A sturdy bracket is attached to each case with 4 selftapping screws and two 24 inch steel straps are attached to the bracket for hanging the blower from your rafters. This assures that any vibration is isolated from your ceiling. But in practice these blowers are extremely well balanced and have almost no vibration.

Squirrel cage blowers have the characteristic of pulling air into both sides, not one side. So two duct rings are attached to the blowers sides and ducts are connected from the blower to a box in the attic with two connections on it. The bottom of the box sits in the attic over a hole you cut in the ceiling. A nice white louvre covers the hole from below.

A secondary advantage of these blowers is that each side could be ducted to separate bedrooms. For example, the 3000 CFM blower pulls about 2000 CFM from one side and 1000 from the other. So the 2000 CFM side would be connected to a hole in a hallway, and the other side to a hole in the master bedroom, or vice versa. It is recommended that bedrooms have between 1000 and 1500 CFM each. In fact, the DOE (Department of Energy) recommends that if you want to cool your entire house down quickly, you install enough CFM to equal 3 times the total square footage of your home. That means that my home, for instance, with 2700 SF, should have almost 9000 CFM installed. But my house keeps fairly cool downstairs and heats up a lot on the western facing side with our master bedroom. So my 2000 CFM blower in my attic does a great job of pulling cool air into our master bedroom.

To see more details about this new application for old blowers, go to YouTube and look for WholeHouseFanGuy. Or send him an email to [email protected]. He ships all over the U.S