Are industrial fans effective cooling solutions?  

Factories, warehouses, and shop floors are hard to keep cool. High ceilings and limited insulation make these buildings trap hot air, especially in the summer months. To protect your workers from heat, you might consider installing an inexpensive cooling solution like industrial fans.   

Fans are a great way to move air around, but they don’t cool the air. That means fans can be helpful in certain situations, but their effectiveness is limited when it comes to cooling your large space. Let’s look at situations where an industrial fan can help, and where it falls short. 

What are industrial fans used for? 

Industrial fans are great at one main function: moving air around. Since fans can circulate air effectively, they work well for these applications:  

• Air destratification: Hot air rises while cool air sinks. The area at floor-level might be cool, while upper levels feel stifling hot. This stratification creates uneven temperatures and energy inefficiency. Fans mix the stratified air to create a more uniform temperature in the space. As a result, they make working temperatures more comfortable and can result in energy savings.
• Ventilation: Many industries work with solvents, paints, and other chemicals that give off dangerous, even deadly fumes. To maintain safe working conditions, it’s important to exchange the air in the workspace regularly and have adequate ventilation. Industrial fans can draw air into your workspace, push it out of your workspace, or both. These functions promote the flow of fresh air and make your space safer.
• Pressurization: Fans can also be used to draw air into spaces to create positive pressure. This pressure helps keep contamination out of your workspaces. It can also create favorable conditions for certain chemical reactions. Industrial fans are great for labs, manufacturing, and specialized assembly lines.
• Drying: Fans can move air at a continuous speed, facilitating evaporation. By moving air around the workspace, fans are great for situations like making paint dry faster and preventing sweating slab syndrome. Sweating slab syndrome occurs when temperature differences cause condensation on your concrete floors. It can create safety hazards for your workers as well as damage structures and machinery.    

Can industrial fans cool a room? 

Since fans only circulate air, they don’t necessarily lower the air temperature. An industrial fan can make a room feel cooler if you meet one or both of these two criteria:     

1. Access to a reservoir of cool air: A fan can cool your workspace if you can pull fresh, cooler air in from another part of the facility. If the machine shop is the only area that gets hot, you can vent air with a shop fan and bring in cool air from other parts of the facility. Industrial fans can also circulate air from a reservoir of cool air outside, like during the fall and winter months.  
2. Workers can have exposed skin: Fans can make a workspace feel up to 8° F cooler when skin is exposed. If your teams can wear t-shirts and/or shorts while on the job, fans can help them feel more comfortable. However, if your employees need to cover up with PPE, the cooling effect from fans alone is negligible.  

Furthermore, fans are not that effective when temperatures creep into the 90s and above. They can help evaporate sweat, which leads to cooling. Yet workers need to have exposed skin for this to work. 

So… can fans actually cool a workspace? 

In hot industrial environments—especially those with limited ventilation or enclosed workstations—fans may not deliver the needed relief. Without cooler air to draw from, they simply recirculate hot air, which doesn’t solve heat stress or operational inefficiencies. Additionally, factories, warehouses, and labs often require workers to cover up in PPE so they can’t feel the cooling effect of fans.  

For cooling, industrial evaporative coolers are a better choice 

So what can you do if you can’t cool your workplace with an industrial fan? An industrial evaporative cooler is a better alternative in most situations.  

That’s because evap coolers, also known as portable coolers or swamp coolers, actually cool the air. They pass hot air through cooling evaporative media, dropping temperatures by as much as 30°F. They also provide higher airflow capacity than most industrial fans and work well in open or semi-enclosed environments. For example, a large evaporative cooler like the Portacool APEX™ 6500 can cool more than 22,000 cubic feet of air per minute. This can quickly drop the temperature in even the largest industrial facility. Furthermore, every model in the Portacool APEX™ series has wheels and can be moved around to provide targeted heat relief. 

Evaporative Coolers vs. Industrial Fans 

Keep your cool with Portacool 

For effective industrial cooling solutions, choose Portacool. For over 30 years, we’ve helped businesses protect their employees from the heat and stay OSHA-compliant. With our wide range of sizes, you can find a cooler that fits your hottest spaces and meets your toughest needs. To find the right Portacool model for you, please visit a local retailer today. If you want to make a bulk order or have other inquiries, please contact us online.