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[Announcer] You're listening to the Big Air Movement Podcast, powered by US Fanco, produced by the PodShack Studio in Fort Worth, Texas.
Here's your host, Ryan McConnell.
[Ryan] Alright, so today's topic that we're going to be talking about—we're going to be talking about portable fans. And portable fans, we're going to be talking about that in relation to how to use a portable fan, how to use a portable fan to save a little bit of money, how to use a portable fan to cool your house, cool a space, cool your animals in some occasions, and—and maybe even, if you worry about this, maybe cooling some machinery.
Joining us today, we've got John Fox in the studio. John, why don't you give a little background on—on what you know about portable cooling and why you know so much about it?
[John] So I've been in the HVAC business for better than 40 years right now. Mostly, ventilation products. Probably 20 years in—in ventilation only.
I was an applications engineer for probably 15 of those years, so I talked to a lot of customers with a lot of unique problems, and try and help them pick the best solution for them.
[Ryan] Let's walk through it. So, I've got a couple different categories that I put portable fans into. So, I talk about, drum-style fans. So, a drum-style fan—it might be called a barrel fan.
Oftentimes, people just say, "those big industrial warehouse fans." What that is, that's a portable fan. It's not one that's affixed to anything like a wall or ceiling, and that's something you could roll around. It's got a drum on the outside, typically, and that's going to house the—the fan itself. It's going to protect anybody from putting their—their
hands in a spinning blade.
And typically, it's going to have a protective grille on either side. So, we're going to call that a drum-style fan.
Other style fans include a floor-style fan. And oftentimes, this is just your typical fan that's going to be on the floor. It's going to have a protective guard on either side.
Sometimes it has a drum, sometimes it doesn't, and oftentimes it has feet or some type of legs that keep it on the floor.
And then we're going to talk about a pedestal-style fan. So, a pedestal-style fan is a
portable fan—you can move it around—but it's typically going to be on a—it's going to have a base, it's going to have a pole or riser, and then the head of the fan is going to be attached to that.
Now, of course, you could have a drum that's attached to the top, or you could have
just kind of that cage-style fan that is going to protect that actual spinning propeller on the inside, or the spinning blade.
That's the general categories that we oftentimes put portable fans into.
And for every type of fan, there is a use, and there are multiple uses to those fans. When we talk about these in general categories as well, you can talk about cooling people, you can talk about cooling spaces, and you can talk about cooling, let's
say, an animal, you know, like a—like, livestock, horses, things like that, and you can also talk about cooling machinery.
When I'm speaking about that, it's—let's say you have a like—some sort of industrial piece of equipment, puts off a lot of heat, and you have to use some sort of ventilation to keep that cool. And oftentimes, you don't have to do that all year long, maybe—maybe just at certain times of the year.
John, let's walk through and—and think about when you're cooling people, let's say for industrial applications. Let's take it like a commercial warehouse, a pick-and-pack operation. What are some of the things to think about as it relates to cooling people?
[John] When you're cooling people, the advantage of using fans is you put air over the person, they—you evaporate the sweat off of them, and they feel 5, 7 degrees colder than they do if they were just sitting in still air.
It's highly flexible. So if the people are on one line today and another line tomorrow, you can move the ventilation with the people. And it's much more inexpensive because you don't have to cool the whole space.
So, a lot of warehouses are in metal buildings, the sun's beating on them, they're not well insulated. If you're going to try and put an air conditioner in there, it costs a fortune, right?
But, if you put a high-velocity ventilation fan, either—either floor-mounted or pedestal or drum fan, you can get a cooling effect to make the entire area tolerable. You know, it's not as cool as if you have air conditioning, but you can certainly work in that environment.
[Ryan] Is it better, from your perspective—is it better to move a whole—a larger volume of air over people or a smaller volume of air that goes a little bit faster over someone when you're trying to cool a person, let's say in a warehouse environment in the summertime?
[John] So, it depends how many people you have, right? So if you have one fan and one person, you're doing spot cooling on that person, that's fine.
You know, just blow the air over that individual. But once you get 3, 4, 5 people, 3, 4, 5 fans, you got lots of power cords on the floor, it's a trip hazard and all that kind of stuff.
So, you're better off with one big fan in that situation.
[Ryan] Yeah. Okay. So, give us an example of maybe a type of fan that might be used in that. Um, and you don't have to use brand names or
anything like that, but would that be kind of a drum-style fan? Would it be a pedestal-style fan or—or all the above?
[John] Right. So, a little bit of all the above. But if you do a floor fan, you're generally only doing one person, right? If you do a pedestal fan, the advantage of that is you can do a couple of people because you can pick it up off the—off, you know, it's up off the floor and it can blow along two or three people.
But once you get more than three people, you really need a drum fan with a lot of throw. So, a large drum fan can cool a dozen people.
[Ryan] So when you're talking about drum fans, I hear a lot about CFM. So, tell me a little bit about CFM and maybe we can talk about the types of—how big a CFM you might need for something like this application.
[John] CFM is cubic feet per minute, right? So if you imagine a 12 by 12 by 12 cube, you know, one of them, thrown every minute is 1 CFM. Typical cooling fans, maybe a box fan or something would be 800 cubic feet per minute. The high-velocity fans might be 1800 cubic feet per minute.
Pedestal fan could get you up to 2000 feet per minute. But a drum fan can get you to,
6,000, 8,000. They can—they can get a lot more, right? But the stuff that most people buy, that $300 to $500 range, probably 4800 to 6000 feet per minute.
[Ryan] Yeah. So let's say I'm a consumer and I'm—and, uh, or a business owner and I'm trying to cool a bunch of people in a warehouse space, in a commercial shipping operation or pick-and-pack operation, and I'm—I'm trying to figure out ways to cool my people down, and I can—I could go to Walmart and I could buy 50 box-style fans for around $30, right?
Or I could buy, let's say—I could buy one or two giant 60-inch drum-style fans, and maybe that's probably the equivalent dollars.
Are there any things to think about in terms of—in terms of maybe safety, about how much energy these are using? What advice might you give there?
[John] So box fans have evolved over the years to be cheaper and less powerful, really tiny right now. If you put 50 of them down a pick-and-pack line or something like that, you got all the extension cords.
Each one of them is likely to fall over if it gets bumped. It's just a cluttered mess, and it's not moving that much air. Maybe by the time you're done, it's moving the same amount of air, but it's not all directed in the same path, along with all the people.
So, you're much better off with something—you know, from my standpoint, 48 to 60
inches in diameter. One plug, big air, blowing right down the length of line where the people are. It just works better because you get higher velocity further down the assembly line.
[Ryan] Let's talk about cooling a space. So, we were just talking about cooling people and some of the ways that you could do that. How about, uh, how about cooling a space, like a large—let's say you're doing the same thing, you're cooling like a large warehouse or a big barn.
What are some ways that people can use ventilation in order to do that?
[John] So, you know, if you mount a fan in a window area or in the—in one end of the barn with a—one—the doors open at the other end, and you get a flow down the length of the barn, that's pretty good because you can take the hot air that's been building up inside of the space, and exchange it with air from the outside.
So, that's—that's more of a ventilation strategy than an air circulation strategy. If
you're going to do a circulation strategy, you're going to be blowing right on the individual and try and get the evaporative cooling effect that we talked about earlier.
[Ryan] Yeah. We talk about portable fans on the—this podcast basically talk about ways to—ventilate, to use ventilation in order to cool spaces without the use of expensive HVAC.
And so we're continuing to talk today with John about uses of drum-style fans, floor-style fans, pedestal-style fans on cooling people. And now let's—let's transition, let's talk a little bit about space. We're talking about larger fans cooling spaces. What are some safety things, elements of safety that we have to think about when we're cooling larger spaces, John?
[John] Well, you want to be careful that you have something appropriate for the
space. So if you're going to do a barn or a, you know, something where there's grain storage or things along those lines, you're going to want totally enclosed equipment, possibly even explosion-proof equipment if the space is rated as a hazardous location.
Most aren't.
But you don't want a buildup of dust or settlement, straw and things like that inside the fan because there's a possibility it could ignite. You don't want the fan to be located in a place where it could be knocked over. You know, bigger fans are pretty stable, but little fans are—are a little top-heavy.
Uh, another concern would be water. If you have some kind of process where there's a lot of water being used or you're trying to use the product outdoors, you want to make sure you're on a deck or something like that where it's protected from any water.
You don't want an electrical shock hazard. There are portable fans that are specifically rated for outdoor use, which would include a ground fault circuit interrupter built into the plug or into the fan someplace.
[Ryan] So let's pause there and let's talk about that a bit. So, ground fault circuit interrupters—those are those big boxes at the end of a power cord, correct? You want to talk a little bit more about that?
[John] What they do is that they detect any leakage of current from the power side of the product to ground. So, if there's any current at all on the ground, or very low—very, well, well less than, like 10 milliamps or something like that—the device will open like a circuit breaker and will prevent anybody from getting electrocuted.
[Ryan] So, I have just a normal—let's say I buy a fan at—at some retail store, and that fan doesn't have a GFCI on it. And let's say I want to use that outdoors. How dangerous is that? I see it all the time. You see people at RV, uh, camping with RVs,and they—they keep them running outside.
Oftentimes, people will hang fans underneath a patio and obviously, I think in many cases, I'm not seeing that—that big GFCI. What's the big hazard there?
[John] Well, electrocution, right? So, you know, is it okay? Well, it might be okay. But, it also might not be okay. And—and it depends on direction of wind, direction of water, how much water, how much moisture.
You're taking a chance and it's kind of a needless chance. There's safer technology.
If you want to use it outside, just buy something that's rated for outside. Yeah, it's going to add maybe 30 bucks to the cost of the product, but it's sort of like set it and forget it.
[Ryan] How about long term, if something's outdoor-rated? Does a product last longer if it's outdoor-rated?
[John] Generally, when a company offers a product to be outdoor-rated, they'll think of things like UV protection in the paint. They'll want to make sure that the corrosion—you know, the thickness of paint is thicker so that there's no—no possibility of corrosion or—there's always a possibility of corrosion, but, you know, less possibility of corrosion.
The wiring will be rated for UV light. It's just—it's just much more carefully thought out for being outdoors.
[Ryan] Yeah, it was kind of interesting. One time I was down in Florida on the coast, and you can go to all those little, you know, kind of crab shacks and things like that. Typically, they have a nice patio kind of overlooking a bay or overlooking the ocean or something like that. And I noticed, when I looked up on the patio and they had a bunch of fans, looked like those fans were—they were rust—typically, they were rusted over, almost completely. The blades were rusted.
If there was any type of housing or protective cage, that was rusted. That to me probably seemed like that wasn't an outdoor-rated fan. Would you imagine that?
[John] Good chance it wasn't. But I will tell you, that salt air by the shore is just brutal and it rusts everything.
[Ryan] Cooling animals, and cooling pets. We'll start with a story. This—I see this a lot in North Texas, where I live. And oftentimes, I'm at a friend's barn or something like that, and I see them using a box-style fan on, say, a horse stall inside a barn.
And I look at that oftentimes and that box fan is typically covered in dust, call it like little pieces of hay or—or things like that. And I look at that and I wonder, that seems like that is an accident waiting to happen. Do you have any comments on that, John?
[John] Yeah, it absolutely is an accident waiting to happen. It's covered in dust, it's not rated for that kind of application. You know, eventually—you know, over time, motors break down.
And you're in a really dusty environment with an open motor. All that stuff works on the insulation on the windings of the motor. Eventually, it's going to short and it catches fire. And there are lots of people who have experienced barn fires and—and lost all their animals, right? And it's—it's preventable because there are products that are specifically made for that kind of environment.
[Ryan] Yeah, truly nothing is more heartbreaking than to hear about a barn fire that's been unattended, and somebody comes in later and there's—you know, these are their babies, basically. These are members of their family that have been lost.
[John] Right. You know, you saved a hundred bucks on a fan, but what did it cost you?
[Ryan] Exactly. So, talk about if you were going to design a system in order to cool a barn, what would you recommend?
[John] So, I'd do two things. I'd probably use a wall-mounted fan, actually, with a totally enclosed motor and mount it high, blowing down on the barn. Horses sometimes get annoyed by the little box fan running and, you know, try and get it. And they can be quite persistent when they're trying to knock something out of the way.
The other thing is that the end of the barn, you want to make sure that you have, maybe a drum fan moving air all the way down the length of the barn, you know, one blowing in, one blowing out, right? That way you don't have any heat buildup.
And if you can vent the roof at all, that would be another good option.
[Ryan] Yeah, that's something I see a lot is, oftentimes, people complaining about where they've got a barn that they're trying to cool down, and they've got just, you know, one fan at the entrance, and they're just blowing it into a enclosed space. I think something that you pointed out that a lot of folks don't think about is you've got to have air—air coming—for the air that you're pushing into a space, you have to have air moving out of that same space, or else you're simply pressurizing the space, correct?
[John] Right. If you only use one fan, you're going to blow a little bit of air in, and then it's going to start to leak out, but usually it leaks out through the same door that you're
blowing in, so you just get this little recirculation effect in the area of the fan. But you're not really cooling the whole barn. You know, it's marginally better, but it's not a solution.
[Ryan] How about smaller pets, something like dogs and cats inside a home in the summertime? Let's say—we've talked about the use of whole-house fans in our previous episodes. How about if folks—I've got a lot of calls from people that have outdoor spaces that they're trying to cool for, let's say, a kennel for dogs, and they're trying to come up with ways to cool.
Do you have any thoughts on, in terms of safety and effectiveness there?
[John] Right. So floor fans are really good for that. And if you locate them kind of centrally in the space, blowing in one direction, and the air can go like down to a wall, hit the wall, and then come backwards, and you sort of get a—a recirculation flow established. You know, the animals will find a spot where they feel the air moving and they'll naturally lay in front of it or stand in front of it.
[Ryan] Yeah. And if—of course, if you have a dog in a kennel or something like that, and maybe the best way is to just make sure that there's air movement coming in through the front grate, and then somehow escaping through the air holes on the sides, I imagine, not necessarily just pushing air, where the animal can't feel that.
So let's talk a little bit about when you look at the—all kinds of different styles and shapes of portable fans, I—online, you can easily see, you could spend up to $10,000
on some larger drum-style fans, let's say, like, 60 inches and above, and you can go all the
way down to a small desk fan that you're spending six dollars for.
Is there any hints or tips that you might have for our listeners to try to find the best deal? Is there any specific size that maybe is the most affordable but moves the—moves more amount of air for our listeners?
[John] So, most affordable, you get to that 18 to 24-inch kind of, floor fan range.
That's relatively inexpensive, it does a nice job if you only have a handful of people or pets or—or kids in an area. When you start to get into more industrial application, you got to really be thinking, you know, in terms of, $300, $500 for a 48 or 60-inch drum fan.
The really big ones are—the really expensive ones are very specialty-purpose, uh, kind of products. Yeah, you probably don't have to go that. But 5, 600 bucks is going to do a nice job, particularly in a barn.
[Ryan] Is it safe to say that the more expensive is not always the better? Is that—would that be safe to say?
[John] I would say that the more expensive, you don't always get more value, right? You can pay a lot more, maybe it lasts longer, maybe it's more energy-efficient, but, you know, by the time you're up to $6,000, you got to save a lot of money in order to ever recover that investment.
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[Ryan] Thank you, John, for joining us today talking all things portable fans.
We talked about all kinds of different types of portable fans—from drums, to floors, to pedestals—different uses—cooling people, cooling places, cooling animals. We talked a
little bit about pricing and size, and we encourage everybody out there to play with some ventilation, see what you can do, see how you can maximize your savings each week, and join us again on The Air Movement Podcast.
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