Our house has a whole house fan which we had never used in a year and a half of living here, until yesterday.

Good lord, that thing is amazing. A fan located above the ceiling in the central hall way of the house, creates such a... sucking... that metal venetian blinds in faraway rooms pull away from their windows and stay there, suspended in the air as if by a giant magnet.

just make sure your screens are totally intact -- otherwise you suck in a bunch of bugs.

No bugs, but we did suck in enough humid, smoggy Atlanta air that I swear I could feel it in my lungs during work the next day. I just remembered that back in 2001 when we lived in a house without AC and kept the windows open all the time, I felt like this all the time.