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Best fan placement to move air through the house

Matthias random stuff · 11.5M views · 2021-06-30 · 6:28

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Overview

Matthias Wandel uses anemometer measurements to find where to place a fan to move the most air through a house at night. He finds that placing the fan some distance back from the window works better.

On Hacker News

Cited in cooling and fan-noise threads as a short video with actual data on fan placement.

Recommended by 4 HN people across 4 months · HN mentions 2021–2025

Topics

Power grid, heating & buildingsHome, DIY & practical skillsEveryday physics & science demos
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fansventilationairflowhome coolingexperiments

What people said

samldev · 2023-07 · Strong recommendation

Matthias Wandel made a great video showing how it's better to place the fan a meter or two away from the window to get more air flow [VIDEO]

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Sweepi · 2025-09 · Recommendation

Since all comments seem to agree that noise cancelling wont work, 3 practical tips: 1. use the Bernoulli-Effect, aka get "up to 50+%"(depends on fan model) more airflow by placing the fan 0.2(0.5) - 1.5m away from the window. 2. Blow air out of the window, dont try to suck air in. 3. To avoid noise: Put the fan in another room and open the window in the room where you are. Video with data: [VIDEO] (6 minutes)

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nemacol · 2022-09 · Recommendation

[VIDEO] Matthias has an interesting video that is tangentially related talking about the distance of a fan to a window and air flow. While watching I was wondering how this interacts with PC case fans and if they are losing a lot of performance by being directly against the case.

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Sources

Video by Matthias random stuff, played through YouTube.

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