[driftless2]

I grew up in a house with no AC except in my parents bedroom. We did have a kind of AC though for hot summer days...the basement. I remember one incident in particular though. My older brother and I slept in an upstairs bedroom which got uncomfortably hot in the dog days of summer. So my father bought us a reversible fan. One very hot July day he put it in the window and switched on the mode that he staunchly claimed would "suck the hot air out of the room."

Except in that mode, the hot air wasn't sucked out of the room. After sweating a few more pounds of liquid, I informed my father that it was still very hot upstairs, and could we reverse the fan and blow in the cool night air. My father became exercised and righteously claimed that the fan was sucking the hot air out of the room, and it would just take a little more time.

I knew better than to argue with the old man for any length of time, so I just said, yes sir, and let him go back downstairs. Immediately after he went downstairs, I switched the flow of the fan to blowing in the outside air. The room was immediately filled with delicious, sweet, cool night air. My father came back upstairs to check on the situation and was confronted with a very cool room. I then informed him that I had switched the air flow on the fan. He had no argument, but my father never said he was wrong about anything. He just turned around and walked back downstairs.

[Tired of Taxes]

My sons’ father always made the same claim. He insisted on the fans facing outward to “pull the heat out of the house.” At times, I would turn the fans facing inward, but he would turn them outward again.

I’ve noticed that, even on very hot days, it feels cooler when the fans are blowing the hot air inward and around the room. It seems that “pulling the hot air out” works only on cool nights when another window is open and the fan is pulling the cool air from that window through the house.