[JBinKC]

I wonder why they disapperared from the face of the earth. I have been having a hell of a time locating one. They are much more energy efficient than an air conditioner.

[53convert]

Are you talking about a swamp cooler, aka evaporative cooler. They are still used down here and they are still available new at places like Ace Hardware.
They arent as good as an ac unit for dry cool air and they do place a lot of humidity into the interior of the house and you will feel stickey after a while but they do beat 110 in the shade.

[gg3]

Or do you mean a large size fan of the type that is typically installed in an attic?

If you're just dealing with a regular household sized window, a conventional fan works fine. And there are window fans that contain two sets of fans in one unit, so you can have one bringing in fresh air while the other exhausts room air.

Here's what I do for cooling:

The trap door into the attic is small enough that a conventional box fan fits neatly into the opening. When I get home at the end of the day and the place is hot, I simply turn on that fan and open a window. The fan sucks the hottest air from inside the house, which is near the ceiling, through the opening into the attic. This air is quite a bit cooler than the attic air that has been getting hot from sunlight on the roof all day. As the indoor air replaces the attic air, the attic cools down, reducing the radiation of heat from the attic through the ceiling into the living space.

Meanwhile, outside air is being drawn into the house, and is cooler than the air already inside. This outside air stays close to the floor, where it forms a river of relative cool that pours throughout the house.

That fan in the attic hatch uses 100 watts. I'm going to look for one that does the equivalent job for 50 or 60 watts, which shouldn't be difficult.

And while this is going on, I've washed my face & sat down at my desk, and as the water evaporates my face cools down. I also have a little "desk fan" going, pointed right at me, creating a gentle but surprisingly effective breeze while consuming only 8 watts.

With this combination, I can cool off pretty completely in a half hour or so, to the point where I can turn off the fan in the attic trapdoor. Then I turn off the little desk fan about a half hour later. And from that point onward, leaving a window open is sufficient.

On the other hand, if you live in a really hot climate, more aggressive steps may be needed. Try this: take your shoes off and put your feet into a bucket of water that's taken straight from the Cold faucet (which will be "lukewarm"). You will be surprised at how fast that cools you off. When you're done with the water, use it for a toilet flush so it doesn't go to waste. (BTW, don't do this with truly cold water, it can give you a nasty pounding headache.)

Another option is one of those spray bottles you can buy for a couple of bucks, of the type you'd use to "mist" your plants with plain water. Mist yourself, and then use a little desk fan to provide a slight breeze. That will cool you off faster than air conditioning.

And don't forget the ice water, though be careful to not drink it too fast or you'll also get a nasty headache.

If you're in a hot dry desert-like place, move now, before the price of energy makes the value of your airconditioning-required house drop like a stone.

[MD]

You will find belt driven fans and motors in industrial supply catalogs like McMaster and Carr. They have mostly disappeared from he big box retailers

[JBinKC]

No its not an attic fan. It is installed in a window, belt driven and it exhausts air with the same power of an attic fan. I looked at the Mcmaster-Carr website and the fans weren't designed for window applications and really didn't look like anything like that. I used to have one when I rented a house in KC in the late 80s but it was the landlord's property. The fan was powerful enough to exhaust air from 2 open windows of a a distance close to 50 ft in my loft area I also saw another one a couple of years ago when I was looking for a summer home in the Truman lake area. The window fans of today do not cut it less power and break too quickly and I do not want to go through the major capital expenditures of installing an attic fan since my attic area is closed off in my existing house.

If I install such a device I figure I would save close to $40 a month in electricity costs so the payback would be very handsome compared to central air.