Originally published at: The best place to put a fan | Boing Boing
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Matthias Wandel is a treasure.
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I like it blasting at the highest setting directly into my face. I will not change.
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Strategic fan placement #1
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This is completely reasonable if your goal is strictly to lower the temperature of the room. But the main reason people use a fan is to have it blowing on you, regardless of temperature. A fan can’t make a hot room cool under any circumstances (by itself), but it can make you feel cool, both psychologically and – if the room is below 110°F or so – by assisting your body’s heat transport.
If you’re leaving a fan on in an empty room then the advice in the OP is correct (though don’t expect miracles), but if you’re in the room then you’re better off doing exactly what you think you should and blasting yourself with the fan.
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I wonder if combining the two would undermine the effectiveness. I’m going to give it a shot and use one fan to push air out the window, and one to push some of the air moving around onto me (once it cools down a little so I don’t need the AC to avoid melting)
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I’d say that a room that has a fan pushing air out of an open window would need a secondary fan that can be used to also blow air towards a person. I’ve actually wanted to set up a fan facing a window but it doesnt have a screen and i’m still waiting for my apt complex to come install it 
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…something something fan blasting in my face right now!
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I don’t think he has adequately accounted for or controlled for normal convection processes. I’m also suspicious of the effect of noise impinging on his data line coming off the anemometer.
Also, I’d like to see the data points from when the fan was placed two feet from the window but left turned off.
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As i lie wondering if i’d survive the quite recent great pacific northwest “heat dome” i had (literal) fever dreams about a 'puter chair which alternately ‘laundry bottle’ spritzed “directly into my face” and ran a fan “directly into my face” with an adjustable duty cycle. Then i started to think about about how much time the fan should run until it evaporated, and then i slept the sleep of the damned then rinse lather repeat… (gad it was terrible!)
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i. was a fan of the DIY bucket of ice, fan – Homemade Air Conditioner DIY - The "5 Gallon Bucket" Air Cooler! DIY- can be solar powered! - YouTube
then a buddy reminded me of the 1970s GM cars that had AC vent under the steering wheel — for mmm, crotchular area cooling… those: those were the best…
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I do both–larger tower-style fan pointed out the screen door, smaller conventional fan pointed at me.
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Good info for me since my apartment is partly down in the ground and it’s been getting extra stuffy thanks to the humidity up here in Minnesota despite the drought. Now I know to put my fans facing the windows to get all that stuffy dead air out of my apartment at night.
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When I lived in San Jose, the house we rented (dubbed the “Drunken Gorilla Villa” because it had apparently been DIYed by drunken gorillas) had no central air. For the most part, this was fine until summer temps occasionally spiked into the hundreds. I used a double exhaust fan on the second floor to push heat out of the house/pull the cooler air up from downstairs. It worked pretty well. Now in Florida, I use a ceiling fan to pull cooler air from floor level.
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I went with the manual option, but the idea of automating it sounds great! 
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Reminds me of an attic fan. Any personal fan blowing around inside isn’t going to disrupt the efficiency of the attic fan at all.
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Im surely in the minority, but I prefer window fans over personal fans (assuming the outside air is cooler than inside)
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My window fan technique has always been a box style fan pressed up against the insect screen (to minimize bleed air) and I would love to see the test rerun with one. ( Without an anemometer, my tests are usually performed with a smoking incense stick lol).
So distance is creating better airflow for this particular fan. Is it because of an added siphoning/venturi effect in front of the fan? Or is the screen increasing resistance when the round fan is bouncing air currents all over it at just an inch away?
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