We love the validation that utilities give to the whole house fan concept by sponsoring rebates on our products. Thank You.
BUT… P.G.&E. took longer to put our new model 2.5WHF on their “qualifying list” than it took us to design, test, photograph, market, and sell the first year’s production! Wow ! We are just too quick for you utilities 
It was the best of times, it was the worst of times. (Don’t worry; that’s the end of the literary pillaging.) I poked my head outside this afternoon at 5 PM, thinking that maybe I should open the windows to warm the place up a little. As I go outside, I noticed that the neighbor’s AC unit was running. The inside temperature in my home was 72º, outside was 88º. So why am trying to warm up and the neighbor cool down?
Several reasons as it turns out. I’m living in an ICF (insulated concrete form) house that has one of our whole house fans installed. Whereas the neighbor’s house is a low mass stick framed house, and certainly has no whole house fan.
Of course whole house fans are great – but what seems to be a great combination is lots of mass to store “coolth” (made up word meaning the opposite of heat). I’ve been able to survive quite well all summer with just a whole house fan for cooling – no AC. That said,during the second week of 105º days, AC would have been nice for about 4 hours per day.
For the last 7 months, we have been including return labels for the packaging foam on most of our whole house fans. The idea was to see if it was practical to ship the engineered foam inserts back to us for re-use. The payoff would be less garbage, and in this case less energy used.
There is a little bit of work required on the customer’s part like packing up the foam and taking it to a UPS drop off. That was our concern. Would anyone bother ?
Not everybody did. Perhaps they recycled locally. Perhaps they want to save the packaging.
At any rate, over the last seven months, we have had a 34% foam return rate, which is actually better than 34%.
Huh? Why ?
See below and take a math lesson at the same time.
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————-Math Lesson ———- Here is the real beauty of re-use. Once the packaging foam is returned, we use it again, and again, and again… Expressed mathematically, the Effective Re-use Rate = .34 + (.34 x .34) + (.34 x .34 x .34)+ (.34 x .34 x .34 x .34) + .. … until the foam falls apart This is a geometric series, and the sum of the series can be calculated as = .34/(1-.34)= .51 If you are interested in the math here is the solution: S=x+x2+x3+x4+… Now S*x=x2+x3+x4+… , So subtract the two terms: S-S*x = x, which simplifies to S = x/(1-x) |
The bottom line is that instead of a truck load of 2,000 foam inserts being used once, they will be used 2,000×1.51 = 3,020 times!
It actually costs us a little bit more to have customers send the foam back, but we think it’s a worthwhile cause !
And… Thanks to everybody who participated.