Whole-house fan

Needs power

A large fan in the ceiling that pulls cool night air in through open windows and pushes the day’s hot air out through the roof space. Night-flush cooling done by machine rather than by opening the right windows, which makes it work on still nights when the passive version does not.

One of 6 ways to meet Active cooling. Build 2/6, Upkeep 3/6, Efficiency not rated. Cost, carbon and footprint below are rated against those 6, not in absolute terms.

Cost
Medium
Upkeep
Occasional
Skill to build
Intermediate
Lifespan
Long, given a motor that can be serviced and a shutter that still closes
Embodied carbon
Low
Space / material use
Medium
Output timing
On-demand/controllable
Skill to repair
Intermediate

What your site needs

A ventilated roof space big enough to take the air it moves, windows that open, and outdoor air that actually goes cold at night. It also needs an insulated shutter, or the opening it cuts through the ceiling leaks heat all winter.

Inputs

Outputs

none

Ranking in its sub-function out of 6 alternatives

Every option in this sub-function, with the value on each axis and a note on what drives it (this solution highlighted):

SolutionBuild skillUpkeep burdenEfficiency
Night-flush coolingBasic2N/A
Evaporative coolingBasic2N/A
Heat pump (air- or ground-source), reversible modeSpecialist8N/A
Night-sky radiative coolingIntermediate4N/A
Ceiling fanBasic4N/A
Whole-house fanIntermediate5N/A

Build skill and upkeep burden are proxies (lower burden = simpler to maintain); the efficiency column is this sub-function’s ranking, 1 = best. “N/A” where an axis isn’t rated here.

Sources

Tutorials

No build tutorial recorded yet.

What this page does not tell you

No sizing or quantities: how much a technique yields, and how much a household needs, both depend on the build and the people, so the catalogue compares options rather than dimensioning them. It carries no bill of materials and no build sequence, and it is written for an oceanic, clay-soil climate (Normandy, France). Regulatory notes are indicative and need confirming locally.