Friday, 2 March 2012

Having HVLS Fans

By Carroll Budd


Slow-moving air has kept people cool in hot climates for hundreds of years. In British India, servants would manually propel overhead circling fans called punkas; large ceiling fans were used in pre-Civil War southern mansions. Servants in British India would operate overhead swinging fans with a foot push; large ceiling fans were used in the dining rooms of southern mansions before the Civil War. Fans quickly became motorized as electric motor technology improved.

A key difference of these HVLS fans lies in how big they are and this is the attribute that makes them high volume. The diameter of these fans are typically somewhere between 8 and 24 feet, depending on the needs of the building. While true that an HVLS fan is quite large, it is most effective when mounted onto the ceiling and so there is no worry about finding a place to put it.

Cooling large spaces required a series of small, high-speed fans that didn't cover wide enough areas on their own. Relying on multiple high-speed fans like this meant dealing with maintenance concerns and high energy costs. That all changed in 1995, however, when Walter Boyd, an engineer and designer, developed High Volume Low Speed fans, or HVLS fans. Now large institutional, commercial, or industrial spaces had a more efficient cooling option available.

Relying on HVLS fans for cooling large spaces may still be a lesser known option for designers who are overly reliant on HVAC systems. But thanks to the aerodynamic design of their blades and the airflow that they are able to generate, HVLS fans are not only efficient, they are highly effective. The total efficacy of a fan is determined by the amount of cubic feet of air per minute (CFM) a fan can produce.

Large, open spaces with high ceilings, at minimum 15 feet, are where HVLS fans are most effective. Studies show that HVLS fans are the most energy efficient among the air circulating fans on the market. The high speed fans need more speed to increase their air displacement; HVLS fans instead use their size. Well, its an accepted principle of physics that the value of the speed of a fan cubed is equal to the amount of power needed to power the fan.

Basically, if you want to double the speed of an electricity-powered fan, you've got to first provide 8 times the amount of power to the fan Consider a high speed fan capable of delivering air at 20 mph; it will require 64 times the power as a fan delivering air at speeds of only 5 mph. The large size of the HVLS fans make it possible to move sizable amounts of air at low speeds, without requiring the additional power or speed. Additionally, for warmer months in places without air conditioning, the slow-moving air created by an HVLS fan is more apt to break up the moisture-rich layer that can surround people, leading to a cooling evaporation.




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