We have a whole house window fan that was probably manufactured in the 50’s (“Homart Cooler”). It is excellent for upper Midwest summer nights. Our house is old enough to make ducted AC a nonstarter, so the ability to cool the interior of the house over night is very helpful.

Agree with ductless A/C, we are in a 100 year old house with radiator heating and the ductless A/C cools two floors admirably.

try high velocity ducted ac, via heat pump. the ducts are 1.5 inch diameter flexible insulated pipes. Alternatively, ductless AC (minisplit) via heat pump. That said, whole house fan is nice.

I have a whole house fan, and it's awesome. Cools the house down really quickly at night. I mostly did fine in the Pacific Northwest without any A/C until a couple years ago. A whole house fan is worse than useless, though, when you have wildfire smoke and it isn't getting below 75 outside at night. I finally had to cave and buy an air conditioner.

They also aren't that great in humid climates. They will cool the house, but the air is still damp, leading to mold and other damage.

Air King makes one (9166F) that can be put in a window and will cool the air pretty quickly. I've barely ran the AC this year since I've started pulling in cold air at night and closing the windows in the morning.

As another comment points out, with wildfires it's kind of useless when the air quality outside is bad.

They live in Fresno where it is quite hot even at night during this time of year. It isnt going to be below 80F for more than a couple hours during the night (early tomorrow morning).