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FAN FAQ TOPICS:
Why aren’t higher hp engines offered on the 20-inch fan?
Wasted horsepower increases CO output , noise, weight to carry, etc, without an adequate payoff in air volume.
You may notice that VENTRY Fans are powered by Honda engines just like the box fans, but have lower horsepowers. Why? Because the Safety Props on VENTRY Fans utilize the horsepower.
For instance, the 20-inch VENTRY fan comes with a 4 hp Honda motor. Our largest twenty four inch fan has only 6.5 hp. Other manufactures offer 20-inch fans with 9 hp engines and 24-inch fans with 13 hp! Horsepower is often used to compensate for poor propeller design. We believe this reduces value because while CFM might increase slightly, so does the price, while safety and usability decrease!
TRUE STORY: Hot air balloon pilot Ken Manning has been pleased with the performance of his 24-inch GX160 VENTRY Fan, which he uses for inflation. He told us that a friend of his, also a balloonist, had asked him what size fan he purchased. When told it was a 5.5 horsepower model, the friend asked, “Why so small? What brand is it?” “A VENTRY,” Ken had responded. “Oh,” said the friend, “Then that’s no problem.” |
Physical laws of nature limit the amount of horsepower you can efficiently absorb relative to propeller disc area. This is analogous to the limitations on drafting water through a 2-inch suction line. Regardless of how much horsepower you hook up to that suction hose, atmospheric pressure and friction losses limit how much water you are going to move. The same principals apply to moving air.
With a twenty-inch propeller, 4 horsepower maxes out the efficiency curve (as on our 20-inch, 4 hp GX120 model). Increasing horsepower without increasing the prop disc area actually creates more noise and stirs the air instead of pushes it. That painful racket you hear coming from oversized engines hooked to inefficient propellers is the sound of inefficiency.
