Having lived in large homes and having had every convenience at times in my life, I never thought I'd need to depend on a fan to survive. Here's my story. We got this fan to powerfully move air through are tiny studio apartment because our evil upstairs neighbors chain smoke 18 hours a day and it seeps into our apartment from gaps in the walls and ceiling around the fixtures. It also comes in the front door from what escapes from their large front window and in the back door from them smoking on the patio. What a nightmare! It was quickly destroying my health and hurting my son's health too. So, we used tape and plastic sheeting to imperfectly seal up all the gaps we could find. As soon as we sealed up one, the fumes would find their way inside our apartment from another gap. The one we couldn't beat was the gap above the hard-wired smoke detector. Even if we bought our own smoke detector and sealed the provided one, it would hinder the ability to alert other people in the building if we had a fire in our apartment. So, we felt we couldn't seal that one. The apartment manager is a slumlord and essentially told me to "Eat $%^ and Die--or move out if I don't like it." (This is a federally funded senior apartment building though we pay the full rate.) She, and, I presume, the management company are Satan's spawn. My eyes became red and crusty, my lungs felt shrunken and beaten up, my sinuses and throat felt inflamed and crackly dry. Our apartment smelled like an ashtray, and we both were so full of nicotine that we were agitated and couldn't sleep. Two doctors wrote letters about how this is destroying my health, but the management became more aggressive and called into question my worthiness as a human being. I am a teacher and a community volunteer. All my life I"ve been told I'm too nice. This was supposed to be a safe haven during the pandemic while we restarted our business, but it's become our personal hell. Where we live, it's nearly impossible during the pandemic to find anything affordable as this area has become a refuge for city dwellers. My son's job is nearby and we need to stay as his job is very secure. So, I bought a three hundred dollar air cleaner that sounded like it could fight off the fumes and smoke. While it's probably good for most people with allergies or who have occasional smoke getting into their homes, it couldn't begin to keep up with the toxins in this place. I didn't mention that every surface in the place other than the fixtures, floor and doorknobs had been heavily sprayed with very high VOC paint, including the insides of all the cabinets, closets and drawers. The fumes were so bad that it reflexively step back when I open a cabinet after living here for two months. It's eased, but it's still surprisingly strong. I'd used a window fan to try to blow in fresh air when the air was fresh out the back door, but it wasn't powerful enough to do much. Even with everything but the smoke alarm sealed up, our place was full of rank smoke and fumes. Finally, in desperation, I did more internet research and saw the words "high velocity fan," and went to fan ratings, Amazon (with Fakespot activated) and so on to find something to blast the air through my apartment. I kept being pointed to this fan, and I am so glad I did. 90% of the time, even when there is air that wants to come in the front door with lots of second-hand smoke, and even when fumes want to come in the smoke detector gaps, if I have this fan on high at the open back door and the small two 9-inch-fan unit under the smoke detector blowing toward the front door so that air doesn't get bypassed, I can't smell any smoke and don't have lung or eye irritation except from the lack of humidity and the air flow which has to be constant. I have made a sort of privacy barrier at the open front door so air mostly goes out at the very bottom and about a foot of the top of the barrier but can leave through the full height of the door once it gets past that. I did that to create a bit of positive pressure in the apartment to discourage the smoke detector gap fumes from coming in. This fan is so powerful that even when the guy is smoking on the balcony upstairs, the full strength of the smoke doesn't fill up my tiny back "yard" and roll into my apartment because the fan literally pulls air from between the wood privacy fence boards. I know this because I had some T-shirts hanging all round the inside of that tiny fenced area to dry, not wanting to risk a laundromat in this pandemic. They were ALL fluttering. I turned the fan off, and the fluttering stopped. I turned it back on and it resumed. So, the fence is 12 feet beyond my security screen door in the back, and I had the fan blowing air in, sitting on top of two storage bins just inside the security screen door. That allowed fresh air to come in and mix with whatever smoke was coming from the balcony so that what was blown through the apartment was diluted and the blown right out the front. I hate any cigarette smoke at all and am very sensitive to it, but that situation was far better than what I had before. It also blew out whatever was coming in from inside the apartment, except some from the corner where the smoke detector was. Blowing those fumes toward the front door took care of that by not allowing it to build up and be helping it join the exiting air from the back and go out the front. This fan is also good when I humidify this tiny apartment to help sooth my irritated eyes and lungs. I run the shower on cold water since it's included in the rent and they won't just seal up the &*^% gaps. The powerful fan blows on the fine spray shower water which helps it humidify the air. The carbon monoxide detector keeps going off, presumably because it's 9 years old. We replaced the batteries but it still goes off every once in a while and then stops. Even if we go outside and stand there for a while away from the building it goes off. So, it's undependable at best. Running this fan full blast 24/7 helps give me some added safety in case there is any CO in here. Of course there is, because cigarette smoke fumes include carbon monoxide and it builds up in our walls and ceiling. There's not telling if it's coming from the stove though they say it's fairly new. It's not brand new. I am thinking of buying another CO detector as the slumlord won't do anything, which is probably illegal. At any rate, we keep this on all the time. When we turned it off for an hour yesterday to enjoy some quiet, the place gradually started smelling like smoke again. With this fan, I am able to greatly reduce the effect of the smoke and cigarette smoke fumes when there is any fresh air nearby outdoors. That's important as I was unable to work, sleep normally, or breathe well before I got this. Why don't we just move out? Remember, there's nowhere to go without paying a lot more. We did return the costly air cleaner as it would slowly remove smoke but then would shoot out air that smelled heavily of cigarette fumes, even when the air was clear. Because of the smoke detector gap, we can't just close the doors against outside smoke. So, this is keeping us well enough to be able to work to make the money to get out. I can't believe the negligence of the slumlord is legal. Now, this fan is strong, nothing like your typical household fan meant for cooling you, creating light white noise, or circulating air. It doesn't oscillate and to change the position you have to use a wrench to loosen and tighten. I put a plastic drinking glass between the bottom and the front lip of the storage bin I have this fan sitting on to make it blow straight in rather than slightly up. I'm not installing the bracket or doing more as I have no intention of investing in anything here or setting up permanently. As soon as we find a place, we're out of here. So, this fan is strong, and, even on low, it's loud. However, even with the small fan on high near us at the front, ab
