Lasko 16" Electrically Reversible Window Fan with Storm Guard 16900G

I've had two of these fans for 4 years now. One upstairs, one downstairs, both set to exhaust. I'd have more of these if I had another window in the house small enough to accept the fan. Just in case you haven't thought about this subject before, it's a lot easier to suck hot air out of a room with an exhaust fan than it is to push cool air in to the room. Using an exhaust fan works much better than just opening a window wide and hoping cool air will blow in eventually. For summer evenings, as soon as it's cooler outside than inside, exhaust fans are the bomb. Place this fan properly in a window, so that the fan and its casing cover the entire open window area. Then open another nearby window just a few inches, and feel the cool breeeze blowing in. When I have both fans going and the patio sliding door open 6 inches you can feel the breeze 6 feet inside. It takes only about 2 hours from jump to cool my 2500 sq ft house to outside levels with both fans going. I've had to put them on timers to stop at 2am or it gets too cold. So why is this a great exhaust fan? It's not the Rolls Royce of fans. It's a good fan at a great price. You can pay 3x what this one usually costs ($50 to $80) for only marginal improvements in performance. True, it's not built like a Sherman tank but it's built plenty well enough to do its job. (I like that--you know what they say, An engineer is someone who knows how to build a bridge that barely stands, but it does stand.) Some notes: If your window opens side to side, the height of the window on the inside ledge should be at least 26.5 inches and less than 34 inches. You need to be able to open the window at least 18 inches wide, preferably 20. They say this is a 16 inch fan, but that's the blade width. The basket is a little over 18 inches. You can screw the fan into the window, if your wife will let you. For some reason wives seem to object more to screw heads sticking out in the horizontal plane of a window than the vertical. It will work just fine to wedge the fan by turning it 90 degrees and extending the side panels appropriately. The side panels can be precisely set--they have two screws on each side. You may want to put some foam rubber or other soft material along the edge of the panels to reduce vibration--I didn't find it necessary. If your window opens top to bottom, then the width of the inside window ledge should be at least 26.5 inches and less than 34 inches, and you should be able to open the window in such a way that the height of the opening is no more than 21 inches, 22 at the most. You can wedge the fan in this kind of window too, if screws still don't pass the wife test. If you use screws, use the template included with the fan, and try hard to be precise, leaving about 1/16 of an inch of space at the bottom when the fan is set in. The fan has a clever keyhole scheme for hanging it in the window, similar to the keyhole opening you use when hanging a picture on a single nail. Take the keyhole length into account when using the template or be ready to put paper towels or felt/foam rubber under the fan to stop rattle. At highest speed the fan isn't annoying--you can sleep with it in the same room if you're not a person who's bugged by white noise. At low speed, it's very quiet. It moves a lot of air. My biggest challenge is getting my wife to buy into the idea that opening one window 6 inches will cool the room faster than opening it all the way. The idea is to get a breeze sucked into the house, instead of having cool air just mill around at window boundaries. My fans have been going now for 4 years with no signs of quitting. But I did just buy another one as a backup. No reflection on the fan, I'm just one of Those Guys. Be careful with the wings that extend to fit the window. They're not unduly flimsy, but they are a little flimsy. I broke one already. Another commenter worried about getting out of a window in case of a fire if the fans were screwed in. My take is that an adrenaline-charged 6 year old would have no problem flinging this fan across the room when screwed in. If you're worried, wedge. Despite what I've said about noise and vibration, the fan is nicely balanced and not prone to excess vibration. You have to do some work mounting it correctly, but it's simple work for anyone if you relax and do it right. Get a level and a glass of wine, and you'll be fine. You will have to clean your window screens. Kind of like replacing your furnace filters. Depending on how dusty your area is, you may have to do it more than once a year. It is nice to be able to shut the window without moving the fan. Ours stay in the windows year round. Bottom line: if it gets cool enough at night in the summer where you live that you wish you could sleep outside because the house stays hot, this fan is for you, if you have windows that can fit it.

Since we've lived in this house -- about 25 years -- our custom in the hot days of summer has been to close all windows during the day when it's hot, then at night turn on an exhaust fan on one side of the house and open a couple windows on the far side of the house from it. By morning, the house was always chilly, we turned off the fan and closed those windows. The fan in question was always one just like this one. It wasn't perfect, but given the 8-10 hours of running, it always did the job. A problem came in 2013: I wanted to do a thorough cleaning of the fan blade, because accumulated dust and dirt significantly reduces the amount of air it can move. So, I unscrewed the cover and -- Ooooops, dropped the motor and blade. The blade shattered like glass. So, if you have this fan, don't ding that blade with anything. It's possible that years of vibration makes it subject to this kind of failure. Anyway, Amazon was there to rescue me and, literally on the next morning, I got a replacement. That has been running summers ever since -- five years. I'm baffled by the large number of negative reviews. This thing is the very embodiment of a product that does exactly what it's supposed to do and does it well. Climate change has driven us to get a split air system for the hottest days, but we still have this fan in the window and, if the nights get cool at all, the fan is turned on to do its magic. Actually, some of the nights have been ultra humid, and we didn't want to draw in all that moisture, so we have used the fan on its lowest speed; by morning, the house is cool, so even the low speed moves plenty of air for this purpose. (Don't have the exact numbers, but we're talking about around 1200 square feet of house in four rooms.) All in all, unless something horrible has happened to thisi product in the past 5 years, pay no attention to the nasty reviews. No, it's not a Swiss watch, just a darn good window fan.

I did a lot of research on attic exhaust fans. I have a 1700 square foot house and it does circulate air nicely. I leave it on exhaust all day and there is a noticeable draft when standing in front of any of the downstairs windows. Then I put it on high intake for an hour or two before bed and it sucks in a bunch of nice cool air and drops the room 2-4 degrees in temp (I have a thermometer in the bedroom). Then I switch it to low intake overnight to maintain the cool. Its a great option for people like me who can't have a proper attic fan -- our attic is finished and actually were the bedrooms are so we have crawl space on either side rather than an attic above. Yes the plastic is flimsy which I knew form other reviews but it holds up to the weight of my very old wood and double pane glass window sitting on it. However I took a star off because the expandable sides are too flimsy - they are supposed to expand and then you screw it tight to keep them in place. The way the screws are and the flimsy-ness of the plastic it was very cumbersome to expand the sides properly, we ending up loosing two of the screws and now it is just sitting with gaps on either side. Despite that it still works very well. It is shallow enough that it I can put it in the window in front of the storm screen. A few reviews complained about it bringing in moisture and it needed a dehumidifier. Well, if it had one then it'd be called an air conditioner. Yes it is a powerful exhaust/intake fan which means if it is 90% humidity out you will wake up feeling damp as will your blankets and floors because it pulls in the AIR outside your window, moisture and all. I'd only want to design changes - sturdier expandable sides or at least a less cumbersome design and a remote control!

WORKS GREAT. I PUT IN WINDOW AND DRAW ALL THE HOT AIR OUT

I have never spent more than maybe $10 on a fan in my life, so I was kinda antsy about buying this one, but seriously, it was absolutely worth the price for me. Let me explain my situation: My building is really old, retains a LOT of heat, and the wiring is such that tenants are only allowed to have one small window AC unit per apartment. Moving it back and forth from one side to the other is a huge pain, but it results in a sort of less-dramatic Sophie's Choice: do we leave the AC in the bedroom so we can actually sleep, or leave it in the living room/kitchen so that we can actually get things done without dying of heatstroke? So that's why I bought this fan--to help move air in the kitchen/living area and hopefully make both rooms habitable during the heat. I haven't gotten the chance to test it during a major heat wave yet (hopefully I won't NEED to *crosses fingers*) but so far, I could not be more pleased with how well it works. What I love the most about it is the versatility. It is nearly silent on the "low" settings, but when you set it on "high," it moves a LOT of air. The fact that you can flip back and forth between intake and exhaust is really one of the selling points--it's super-handy in our combined kitchen/living room because, when my partner is cooking, we can flip it on to draw out a lot of the heat it produces. If we open up all the rooms, it helps a lot with cross-ventilation--way more than the box fan we were using previously. In addition, our old building has huge radiators which produce a TON of heat in the winter, and the exhaust function, when placed in a window near the radiator, helps a lot with keeping it from becoming too hot in here. Bonus! Basically, it does everything I hoped it would do, and a couple of things I didn't even anticipate. I also love the way it's shaped--it fits nicely in the windowframe, and has a cute retro appeal. It's front-heavy, but still quite easy to move. It's also easy to take apart and put back together for cleaning, which is a HUGE plus. My only complaints, all of which are extremely minor: -I wish it were a little flatter, just because now we can't really close the indoor shutters on that window, but that's an unusual situation (most people probably don't have those!) and I won't fault the design for it. -I'm a little concerned about the switch--it seems a bit flimsy and I'm afraid it'll break if I turn it with too much enthusiasm. But, so far, so good! -while it's pretty quiet, it does make a distinctive noise on the exhaust setting. It's a bit annoying, but if you're more than a few feet away, you can't really hear it--I've used it while napping on the couch before and not found it distracting.

I moved into my apartment in June 2008. It looked like a nice place to live and about six months later, I was wondering if I had made the right decision. First of all, there wasn't much circulation of air in the summer. All the windows were on the West side...one in the bathroom, two in the living room and one in the kitchen/dining area and if the wind was coming from any direction that wasn't West, it could pretty steamy in the place. Looking on the bright side though, I knew that Winter would be here in a few months and then things would be different. Oh boy, as it turned out, the *things would be different* comment was a vast under-statement. Back to Summer...and the fact that I hated all the heat in my apartment. I thought that maybe I should get a window fan or two to get some of that air moving. That's when I stumbled onto this 16" fan from Lasko. I did as much research as I could and finally decided to make the purchase. As it turned out, it was one of my better decisions! When the fan got here, I took it out of the box and read the owners manual from front to back. Then, I looked at the window and then back at the fan and wondered if it was going to fit. It looked BIG! And the window looked, well...NOT big. So I opened the window as far as it would go and simply popped the unit right in except for a half inch gap on the top. So I carefully pulled the window down until there was sort of a nice snug fit. However, there was a large gap on the right side, even after I pulled out the extension on the unit. But heck, being wildly resourceful, I just found some durable cardboard and after measuring the window and cutting the cardboard to size, I just snapped it in and had a perfect fit! Cool! But, as I checked out my work, I saw a lot more small gaps and that just wasn't acceptable cuz I needed kind of a vacum around the fan unit to be able to draw the air from the bathroom window, all the way through the apartment to the fan in the dining area. As luck would have it, I found a gob of Homer Hankies from when the Minnesota Twins won the World Series and I wondered if it would be sacrilegious if I would use them to fill in the final gaps around the fan unit. Well no it wouldn't, I convinced myself and besides...Who's gonna know? I'm certainly not going to go blabbing about it down at the local watering hole. So...that was that! By now, I was sweating profusely so I figured it was time to cool off a little and as long as there was this half a whole house fan just sitting there in the window...why not give it a try? Eh? So I set the fan on Low and hit the switch and GEEEZ!...the effect was almost, immediate! There was a lot of air coming from the bathroom and I cooled down right now. And I was happy, again. Then, Winter showed up and I thought I would have to remove the fan and store it till next Summer. But, then the so called free heat from the steam radiators came on and as long as it was waaay late Fall and about three degrees above zero, it was kind of comfortable in here, even though the exhaust fan was still running. Then, wouldn't you know it? A few days later the outside temp went up to sixty degrees and I figured it was time to shut off the heater valves. Well, because this building is almost one hundred years old, I think the heater valves are the originals that came with the radiators and when I tried to shut them off, I discovered that they were already off and when the temp in my apartment got up to 92 degrees, I turned the exhaust fan up to medium in self defense. All that stuff was...back in the bad old days and that poor fan has run non-stop for almost six years, until a few months ago when it started to groan a little and I started to panic. So, I went to Amazon and found the exact fan and ordered it...again! then I removed a few phillps screws from the frame part, unplugged the old fan and pulled it out. Then I put the new fan in and put in the screws and plugged it in. Awesome!! Now I should be in good shape for another five or six years. What a great gadget, this fan is. That fan bearing is incredibly durable. So, if you need a fan that will do the job for you, think about all this drivel I just wrote and go get one! :)

This will be my 6th Lasko 2155A Fan purchased since the year 2000. I have kept 2 to 3 running at any given time between the months of March and November whenever possible/necessary. This fan is one of 3 that work without flaws. We've tried to repair the others, cleaned them every year, to no avail. Once the motor fails, that's it. In fact, one of the first one's threw a fan blade which was quite loud. To deal with simple vibration, we devised a system involving thin strips of wood for the bottoms and 2x6s on the sides to provide a solid, semi-permanent gap fillers. I painted the wood to match the room paint and it seems to work well. Our windows are of the cheap variety (drywall with alum. windows wedged into place, no frames). I might have sprung for the next size up, but I couldn't afford the 100 bucks, not to mention, the motors wouldn't match up with the one's I'd purchased so far, IMO. I just waited until amazon.com was selling this and pounced on it (due to the low price). I'm happy with these and will probably continue to purchase these if they are still made. These fans really move the air in our house and I firmly believe they do work better when at least two are involved (one in, one on out or sometimes both on out with other windows in the house open) I'm lucky to have double doors in the "two fans room" that open up to allow a wide birth for the air to flow through. Small footnote: I did try ordering one from another good online store, but when that one arrived, the control knob fell off in shipment and wouldn't stay on. Seemed cheaply made. The one from amazon.com that arrive recently is intact and running smoothly, oddly with no vibration. UPDATE comment: as of 8/13/11 another of our fan's motors is acting up and I may have a theory about that. Please comment to this review if you think this could be it. I use non-aerosol hairspray (on my hair) in the room where the fan is. Only fans that drew the air from the room were affected. Just in the last two years we turned the fan direction to BOTH fans OUT in the room with two windows and the rest of the house windows open. The hairspray presumably will end up being drawn up by the fans, especially the one I am standing 10 feet away from and right in line with. In prior years, that fan was set up to allow air in, not out, for room re-circulation. So in that case it was blowing the spray away from the fan. However the other fan, further to the side in the second window (blowing out) was always the fan that developed motor problems; it would just bind up. Opinions? (I have tried google.com to search for this possibility, to no avail). UPDATE 6/30/2015: Looks like I'm down to just 2 Lasko 2155a fans. One of the two was purchased in 2011, the other, 2014. Of the remaining 3 that I had, one just stopped spinning (hair spray issue, no doubt AND NO WAY TO OPEN IT UP ENTIRELY!).. The two others both screech constantly, so loud that i just want to pitch the things into the garbage. We took them apart, clean, lubed, oiled, you name it. NOTHING WORKS. Therefore, I am labeling this fan a total LEMON. I did everything possible to prevent damage occurring to them, like going to a enclosed room to hairspray my hair. The biggest complaint of all (the only one that I will mention now) is that you can't open the thing up and do minor surgery. Remember the old days when you could do that? I have a little fan from those days that still works! Today, they are probably made so that you have to buy a new motor every 5 years, AT A COST HIGHER THAN THE FAN ITSELF (inc. shipping.). So, before my only 2 fans die, I have to go out and find another one, but I have a hunch that most of the stuff out there is crap anyway.

I have made quite a few purchases through Amazon and have been happy with what I have received. I know that this is not a perfect world and you get what you pay for, but this is the first order that I was not pleased with. First the fan was a used fan. Somebody else had obviously bought it used it it and returned it. The box had been retaped and the old shipping label had been torn off. The fan had minor signs of use, nothing that hindered the use of the fan, it just was not new. This is a relatively expensive fan but does not really draw any more air than an inexpensive box fan. The main benefits are that the air flow can be switched with out turning the fan around and you can close the window without removing the fan. I will keep the fan because I used points to buy it, but if you are looking for a true whole house fan this not it, all though for one room it will do the the job. It is relatively quiet on high speed. The other two speeds are so low they are not very useful other than for white noise.

This fan moves lots of air, making it ideal for our intended use of blowing air out and sucking air in through other windows. It installed easily. We installed it sideways because our window opens side to side instead of up/down. Our only issue was an annoying vibrating noise when used on full speed. Had to jam something soft between the sliding plastic sections to stop the vibration.