DIY Whole House Fan

[The Gangrel]

I'm hoping someone here may have faced similar issues, hence will have some guidance regarding my issue/ideas to combat it.

I live in a top floor apartment which is very well insulated, great in winter, but not so good in the summer as it gets unbearably hot. Heat seems to collect near the ceiling and as there is a hallway between my and the opposite apartment, it is difficult to get a through draft (of course, when it's warm this is hardly optimal anyway).

As it's so much cheaper than running AC (which I don't have installed), I was thinking of installing a DIY Whole house fan, which installs in the ceiling and pulls cool night/early morning air through the windows and apartment and pumps it into the loft space, which then gets forced out through vents in the loft (cooling the loft space in the process).

As the cubic footage of my apartment isn't exactly huge and commercial whole house fans make a terrible racket, I was considering using 4 x 25cm PC fans in a square configuration (presuming such things can still be bought and done so relatively cheaply).

So, is this an intelligent idea or not, will I be able to get decent airflow/cooling or is it all just a pipedream?.

[CA_Steve]

The CFM of PC fans are a couple orders of magnitude below what a true whole house fan provides. You want something that will effectively replace all the air in a few minutes and then cool all the radiant surfaces back down to a reasonable temp. I had one when I lived in Florida. I'd crack open windows in a couple of rooms on one end of the house and kick the fan on. You'd feel the breeze in the hallway.

Here's an example from Home Depot

4500 CFM, and 2.3A @ 120V.