I remember my wife's family having a whole house fan. About 20"x20" and took up what seemed like the full width of the hall (in my memory). Turned it on and it roared, had to make sure some windows were opened before turning it on. It did have metal slats that SLAMED shut when the fan turned off, that were
below the fan (at ceiling level). The fan itself I think was above the rafters.
In the semi-airid area (Bartlesville OK, north of Tulsa) it worked well.
In El Paso I had a whole house swamp cooler, instead of refrigerated air. Turn off the water at night to the air cooler to just run the fan and the house got chilly (once the residual daytime heat got carried away), and clear skys allow great radiation of heat to the dark sky) at night. All that to say I didn't have a whole house fan there.
Living in Houston, it was so humid there really wasn't the 'season' that it would work well. Too hot and humid for 9 months of the year. (2 wks of nice fall, 2 months winter, 2 months of nice spring -- at least the way I remember it). -- there I did use ridge vents, soffit vents, AND un-powered turbines on the roof. One friend cut a 4x4 hole in his roof and put a copula on it. I think we should have put a fan inside the copula with a generator on it, since the hot air escaping his roof (about 2500 sq ft) was so powerful. We did leave vents in the side of the copula of about 8 sq ft per side did help a lot.
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