20" 1/6 HP Whole House Window Fan

Ok, Ill try to keep this short. I have seen a lot of people complaining about how loud this fan is. I will honestly say it is not quiet. This is a great fan. Probably one of, if not the best window fan out there available today. I grew up with fans running in my bedroom, so I am perfectly fin with the noise level of this fan. Is it higher than some other fans, probably. But it is also much, much stronger of a fan, and probably moves 10 times as much air all the quieter fans. My fiance loves it and it is right above out headboard. She said the same exact thing as me, and she actually likes the sound because it drown out any other noise and makes her sleep better. And it has saved us money because we do not need to turn our air conditioner on yet. And it is almost June. I have always had to turn it on by now. It is heavier than most other window fans, but this is more like a whole house fan really. And it is quieter if you have enough windows open. It needs for you to have enough open for air intake, so it does not put a strain on the fan by trying to pull air when there is no air to pull. You will need a little do it yourself brains, and a little know how with some minor tools to mount it. My set up was a bit harder than most im sure, as it did not fit the window just right and had to improvise. But that was my own fault. I had to have this fan because it moved the most air and I wanted to save money on my electric bill by not running the AC as much. I even removed the steel mounting brackets and used heavy duty anchors in the wood trim around the window, and put a really nice thick rubber gasket seal all the way around it so it is air tight, and sucks some serious air through my house. Even on the lowest setting you can feel air moving around the first floor, and it is in a second floor window. And put this sucker on the high setting, and there is a breeze coming in all the windows. Its great! It moves so much air that if you let the door get too close it will suck it shut! So if you can handle fan noise, and wont complain when you know it is a high power fan that moves some serious air, then this is for you. If you want a very quiet window fan, then by one of those cheapos that barely move any air at all, and you will be happy with how quiet it is. But then you will not be happy because they move 1/10th the amount of air this one does. If you purchase this fan, knowing it moves some serious air, and has a high power motor, and is going to be louder than those cheap weak window fans, and then complain and leave bad reviews, then that is a pretty crappy thing to do. And if you are not handy at all, and cant mount it, dont complain about how hard it is to mount. Its a heavy duty whole house window fan not a 3 pound cheap piece of junk. Half of the units frame is plastic, and the other half is metal. Measure you window accurately, and read the specs to make sure it will work for you before you waste you time. Or you can modify things and make it work like I did because I had to have it. But I give it 5 stars even with the fact that it is louder than all those cheap ones. I wanted a fan that would move some serious air and this is probably one of the last ones that you can buy of this quality. Now you can look it up on youtube and find some pretty strange guys doing reviews on it and testing it in animal costumes, but they actually really knew about fans and gave it 5 stars also. I almost forgot. The fact that it has low, medium, and high, and even better that it can exhaust air out of the house, or you can just twist the switch the opposite direction and the fan will run in reverse and pull air straight into the house without turning the fan around, also with low medium and high. Buy it.

****** UPDATE 15 MONTHS AFTER PURCHASE******* This fan no longer works. Turned it on back in November and it was as dead as a door nail. I was busy and didn't have time to mess with it but just recently sent email to company to see if there might be a quick fix. Will let you know. Received reply from Air & Water Inc. Here it is. --- Unfortunately the item is out of warranty and we are unable to exchange the product. We do not offer technical support for thee units, what I would recommend doing is contacting the manufacturer directly to see if they may be able to troubleshoot the product. To contact Air King directly please call 877-304-3785. Thank you for choosing Air & Water, Inc. ---- Well, the box works for Christmas light storage. It is sturdy and keeps the rats out. ********************************************** I have read a lot about this fan, both good and bad. With some of the bad reviews I had to ask myself, "How far has fan motor technology progressed in the last 20 years?" I have fans over 20 years old that still run and that made me wonder about the complaints of "motor burn out." Lets take a look at what might be happening with "FANS GONE WILD." First of all this fan is like an engine, it needs air to run properly. That pedestal fan or ceiling fan in your home has and endless supply of air as it isn't removing or replacing air, it is only moving it around. But a window fan needs more - an unobstructed source. Since it is moving air either in or out of a capsule (your home) it must be able to do so freely. I know, I know, I'm just like you. I love to turn a window fan on, crack another window open about 2 inches and feel that wind roaring through but that isn't what is best for the fan in the long term. You need to have at least 2 windows open = to the size of this fan to help it live a long and healthy life. This fan is already working hard moving a lot of air - it shouldn't have to struggle for the air. As well, get rid of the screen where you have the fan installed, that equates to about a 50% blockage. It impedes air movement in either direction. It blocks air being removed by the fan if you are exhausting air from the home or it blocks air trying to enter the fan if you are blowing air into the home - get rid of it. As well, this is why you need 2 windows open to run an exhaust fan. Those 2 windows probably have screens that impede the air movement as well. You can leave those screens in place but open at least 2 windows. The test: Open the intake windows you plan on using while running your fan. With the fan running now crack a door open to the outside of the home. Without closing the door or lodging it in place, gently push the door closed. If the fan is still trying to pull air in through that door, pushing it back open, you need more windows open. Air should be entering your home with the least amount of resistance possible. My 19 year old son and I installed it - he said it was the easiest thing we have ever put together and installed - it was. It is a little noisy so you will need to place it away from a main living area. If you are like me however, that fan will put you to sleep in about 5 minutes in your bedroom. It looks good and the Storm Guard feature works easily and as advertised, allowing you to close the window when the fan is not in use. Remember and trust that this fan is moving a lot of air as advertised, you don't need a small cracked intake window with a 30 knot breeze blowing through it to know that. 2 intake windows open to the size of the fan should do. All you are looking for from where the air is entering the home is the sensation of a vague feel of air movement - not a 30 knot breeze. To restrict the air flow of a fan is like driving your car with the parking brake on - your brakes will be gone before you know it. That fan that sits on the counter or pedestal doesn't have to work for air, it is all contained within the capsule, your home, those fans merely moves air. An exhaust / intake fan is different, much different. Make it easy on your fan and make it easy on yourself. Good fan - I like it. If the motor craps out on me this decade I'll let you know and take back all of this. I haven't disregarded the bad reports I have read, I shall keep the box for a while. Always Uncle Jim. My name is Jim, I have a high school diploma and am a self proclaimed expert in Fanology. All of my fans still run.

I grew up in a small house with no central air conditioning and our only means of cooling the house was a 25" Air King box fan, circa 1960s. By the time of my parents last move that original fan went missing, and although it was super ugly and dirty, dented, missing carry handle and all its buttons, the speed controls worked great as long as a screwdriver was nearby, and it was mighty morphin powerful! But was it loud! People who have bought this model 9166, complain about its loudness (and it is loud) have no idea how loud those old metal box fans used to be unless they owned them; but by comparison this baby is nearly silent. However, this fan doesn't begin to compare to anything on the market today, especially something that could be picked up at a local big box store for a comparable price or less. I purchased this fan in May 2016 on the recommendation of my father who has been happily using his similar Air King model (version previous to this) for the last 10-12 years without incident yearly from mid-Spring through early Autumn. Prior to buying I read every single 1-3 star review and agonized for days over the decision to blow $150 on a fan! A fan! (I really wanted to blow that money on a new pair of Birkies!) When it all came down to taking the plunge, I realized I needed either three window fans for three different rooms or one really good house fan. The Air King 9166 won and I haven't looked back. The ONLY thing I don't appreciate about this is the noise, but it's only 25 feet away in basically the same room and I can always hear the stereo or TV which aren't ever blasting or even near to 1/4 of full volume. Not bad. I have noticed many comments regarding the fan shaking or vibrating walls and floors; I haven't had either problem in the two seasons or 10 months of operation. My home is a 2,100 sq. ft. tri-level and this fan cools the main and upper levels down nicely in the evenings, which is when I run it most often. Rarely do I ever utilize any settings other than Low/Exhaust as they are perfectly capable of making the house comfortable within 15-20 minutes. By "perfectly comfortable" I am referring to making the inside temperature just as comfortable as the temperature outside. Twice I've run the fan on the Medium/Exhaust controls due to my own impatience, and as one might expect the noise level to increase to some degree it wasn't discernible nearly as much as one might think. One time I turned it on the High/Intake settings which sent a month of filing and the contents of a standard filing cabinet drawer flying across the dining room, sailing on into the living room and smack into the bay window. So, yeah, high/intake...No. Not necessary. While I don't feel as if it needs to be said, I will say it anyway: when operating the Air King fans it is absolutely imperative that the house has plenty of proper ventilation. The window the fan is installed in must be open 100%, ideally in the same room across from the fan another window should be open several inches as well as other windows around the house, especially on the same level of the home in order for the fan to function well. This fan is installed in my dining room window which is always fully open when the fan is operational. Next to the fan window is another window that I open at least 3-4 inches minimum. Across from the dining room, is a family room with three huge windows and two smaller side windows. Those smaller windows are always adequately (3-4") open during operating hours. The kitchen is next to the dining room - same thing, windows open at minimum of 3-4". The second level bedrooms, baths, sitting room always have excellent fresh air circulation. Whether its important or overkill on my part it's worth mentioning that I always wait until the fans stops (completely or nearly depends on the mood of the day) rotating once the power has been turned off before closing the window it is housed in. Additionally, when it begins to rain I cut the power on the fan and close the window, because electricity and water...um, no! If this ($150!) fan ever quits on me it will not be my fault, and especially not because I didn't something careless. People have asked whether the fan should be screwed into the window frame, and I have done just that. The window closes effortlessly behind the fan which is brilliant. No more messing about with lugging a fan in and out of the window when it rains, is too cold, or too hot, and then wondering where to put the thing. Also, no shaking, rattling or vibrations, as mentioned above. It also seems to make good sense to screw it in from a safety standpoint as this sucker isn't any lightweight piece of equipment. Final word on this screwy business, $150...for a fan. Because I run the air conditioning so much less now than I used to, I have saved on average, June-August $127 per month. Hello new Birks! Another thing to note is, absolutely yes, you want a screen down between the outside world and this fan, if you normally live with screened windows. Otherwise - bugs! I live in the woods, my fan is still in the window and we just finished up with stink bug and mammoth wolf and barn weaver spider seasons; can you imagine if the fan was open to the elements? Oh gawd just kill me...no screens... At the end of a warm, stuffy day I highly recommend the Air King 9166 for it's cooling efficiency and capabilities.

In our old house we had a ceiling-mounted exhaust fan that did an incredible job of pulling air through the house and venting it into the attic and from there back outside. In our "new" home we don't have that option so I had to find the best window-mounted solution. Given the modest size of the window I wanted to use (located away from bedroom and living room to mitigate fan noise) I knew that a 20" fan was the largest I could use. Even a 20" is slightly blocked by the top of the raised window. I bought a 16" Air King before this one hoping it would do the job but it didn't seem to move enough air to make a difference. I use it in the garage now from time to time. I've got the 20" Air King mounted on simple hooks attached to the window frame so I can remove it at summer's end in seconds. It sits on the window sill on a thick strip of foam padding which reduces the vibration noises considerably. I remove the window screen before mounting the fan so it won't impede the flow of air. Generally, I use this fan for one purpose. We live in NH and, while summer days are often quite warm, summer nights are generally comfortably cool. If there's not a decent breeze, though, we can't get the cool night air to flow through our house. For this purpose the 20" Air King works GREAT. An hour before we go to bed I'll close doors to restrict where the fan can get air, open all the windows in our master bedroom and then turn on the fan (usually on High). The fan makes a racket on High but as I walk towards the bedroom I can feel the cool night air gushing in through the windows and through the room. In a short time I can usually lower the temperature of the room to match the outside temperature. Since that's my goal, that's success. This fan will NOT exhaust a whole house, or at least not a very big one, but it'll change the air in a couple of rooms in a hurry. I've never used it to intake outside air since, without a windows screen, it'd suck in every bug in the county. The noise is modest on Low and obvious on High. The 20" Air King seems to move a LOT of air. I've used it for 1 1/2 summers and it still works and looks like new.

This fan does a great job at exhausting the air from inside the house and pulling in a strong flow of air from the open windows. This has allowed us to save considerably on the cost of air conditioning. We use it most in spring and fall but also on cooler dryer nights in summer. The key is to only run the fan when it’s actually cooler outside than inside. Our normal routine is to open up some windows before bed and turn on the fan, then close everything up in the early morning before the outside temps warm up. We then switch the ac on during the day. Honestly, except for the hottest summer days, the AC does not run until the afternoon. (We live in a fairly well insulated townhouse). On the most uncomfortable hot and humid days and nights we don’t use the fan. You have to do a lot of paying attention to the weather to get the most cost savings and comfort but we have found this fan well worth it! It is loud on high in the room which you install it. It is moving a lot of air so that is to be expected. It was fairly easy to install. Pay attention to the window dimensions however, because this just fit in our window. Also be advised if you keep the screen in the window which we do, you will have to remove the fan a couple of times a year to remove dust by vacuuming the screen. We have had this fan for three seasons now and really like it!

The fan is rated to move 3560/3120/2510 CFM. So at its slowest speed it is still moving more air than my former 20 inch box fan could on its highest speed. At high speed it seems to move even more air through my house (2,200 sq feet/two story) than I was getting before running two 20 inch box fans at their top speed. I have it installed in an upstairs window (exhaust) with a downstairs window open to pull cool air in. Standing at the bottom of my stairs I can feel the air moving as it's getting pulled up to the second floor and out. It's not a toss your hair around breeze, but with two 20 inch box fans before I couldn't feel the air moving at all. Lowes suggests a whole house fan able to move about 4400 CFM for a house my size. This gets my close enough without spending over a thousand dollars on equipment and more for labor to wire and fit a larger whole house fan through my ceiling and venting up into my attic space. I'd buy this again in an instant considering that alone. I recommend it if it it's a good fit for your windows. Noise level: not bad considering the work it's doing. You wouldn't want it cranking in the room your watching tv in for sure. What I like best about it: the price for the amount of air it moves this is tough to beat. Bonus is the design allows the window to be closed with fan in place. As it's kinda big and bulky that's a definite plus not needing to pick it up after each rain storm to put it back in the window. The design of the fan includes two sides that slide in and out to accommodate various window openings. In my situation I have windows that are finished with sheetrock on sides vs solid wood trim surrounding the window opening. While I could have screwed into stud framing beneath the sheetrock that's not something I really wanted to do. In addition, I wanted the ability to move the fan to various windows vs having is screwed down to one at a time. My solution was to frame the fan to fit my window widths as seen in the pics. Will you have to do this? Probably not. Just seemed the best route for windows like mine and wanting to move it windows in other rooms like I could with regular box fans.

All the good reviews here are true. At first, my plan is to place this fan in our living room window because it gets very hot in there in the summer. This fan is huge and LOUD! Its an eyesore but most of all is Its so loud that we cannot hear the television! Plus the change in temp in the living room is not worth all the noise so we just moved it in our kitchen window to serve as a huge exhaust fan to suck out all the funky kitchen smell (dried fish, fried fish, etc) But we were pleasantly surprised when we turned the fan on in the kitchen, cool breeze started to blow in from the open windows of our living room. Same thing in our bedrooms' windows. As my 13 year old niece says, "Its like magic", when we turn off the fan, the breeze stops and when we turn it on, the breeze start to blow in from all the open windows in the house. You can really feel the cool air moving and see the window curtains moving too. Obviously, I'm so happy with this purchase. Thanks to all the Amazon reviewers here because I will never thought of buying a fan as expensive as this if I didn't read all the reviews here. My hubby was skeptical at first.... we already have both the Holmes and Bionaire Window fans in our bedrooms. It does somehow help, but its not powerful enough. So he thought this fan is just like those 2 - thrice the price, twice the power. But this fan is huge and powerful - like 20X powerful! One fan is good enough for our 1300sqf home. Just open the windows, open the doors in the bedrooms and turn the fan on. The fan will suck all the warm air out of the house and in the process cooler air will enter the house through the open windows. You will really feel the air moving, my hubby is so impressed. http://www.amazon.com/Bionaire-BW2300-Window-Remote-Control/dp/B000065DKJ/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1401598309&sr=8-1&keywords=window+fan http://www.amazon.com/Holmes-HAWF2043-Blade-Window-Thermostat/dp/B000065DK8/ref=pd_bxgy_hg_text_y

Tl;dr: It is quite loud (64dB--that likes being in a car traveling 65mph--http://www.airkinglimited.com/page/window-fan.html) but moves a huge volume of air (3560 Cubic Feet per Minute--for perspective that means that it would entirely replace the air in a 10'x30' room with 10' high ceilings every minute). The problem lies in the fact that air struggles to move between rooms meaning that whatever room this fan is installed in will be cooled down quickly, but any other room will not enjoy much benefit from this fan. I really really enjoyed the idea of this fan. My wife is a light sleeper and the noise of a fan bothers her. My plan was to install this fan in a room down the hall on exhaust mode (blowing air out of the house and creating a slight negative pressure) then simply open the window in our bedroom where the air would flow in from outside to replace that air being blown out. This is theory is sound, but in practice does not really work that well. The problem I suspect really lies in restriction of air flow through doorways. I was imagining the doorway while reducing airflow slightly would effectively act as a venturi, however I suspect that the large volume of air available in the room creates too much turbulence. I have installed this fan in three different rooms and even tried to arrange other fans to help direct the air at doorways, but to very limited avail. In the end, I found that the fan on exhaust is just mostly worthless; I'm not sure if the blades are simply not as efficient moving in that direction of if the screen really causes that much interference, but the fan fails to move much air at all in exhaust mode. When using the fan in intake mode (blowing air into your house) the fan is much more productive. Given that I have installed this fan upstairs, which is all bedrooms meaning many doors the fan is largely only effective at cooling the room in which it is installed. If you house/plan accommodates installing it a large open floor plan, I think the fan will serve you extremely well. To be clear, the fan does move a large amount of air. It does have a slight rattle as others have commented. And it is quite noisy. PS. I personally found it frustration that no one explained how it was installed when I was looking to purchase it. In short, it screws into the window ceil (i.e. on the ledge of the window). There is a paper template that ships with the device to mark and drill the wall. Then four screws hold it in place while the fan rests on the ledge. Additionally this fan is incredibly back heavy meaning there is no way to install it without first putting screws in your wall--I found this frustrating because I could not test it out before putting holes in my walls.

Works really well. Vents entire house as advertised. Low setting is very quiet.

I love this fan..people wrote it made too much noise..but nothing unbearable only when you put it on the max settings. It cools tje room down fairlywell.its not an air conditioner But it one of the best fans...I did not have any motor issues yet..like that sound others reported...it easy to mount and stay very sturdy..no issues here except the price is too high for a fan might as well get an air conditioner with that price..

very strong air flow, highly recommand

Put it in any fitting window, open other windows, turn it on, push air out. That's it. You'll never suffer from heat and humidity again. Who needs an AC?

It has metal skirts and its noisy and rattles. I also have a 16" which is a lot quieter but less rugged built.