DeWalt
We may receive a commission on purchases made from links.
DeWalt is one of the most popular power tool brands in the U.S., and as such, its battery-powered jobsite fans aren't cheap. Ranging from $100 to $200 on a good day, these fans are an investment, but in exchange, you get a high-quality fan with strong airflow that's easy to use pretty much anywhere.
Like all fans, its primary use is to keep you cool. However, with battery power, this fan can cool you off from more places than a standard box fan that needs to be plugged in. You can take it with you from place to place within a jobsite, through your home while you're carrying out renovations, or on your next summer camping trip. Plus, most battery-powered fans from DeWalt have the ability to stand or hang, giving you even more placement options.
Delivering a cool breeze certainly isn't all a DeWalt fan can do. There are multiple unexpected ways to use your DeWalt battery-powered fan, all of which can help you feel like you're getting your money's worth out of a pricey fan.
Accelerate the drying process
Aleksandarnakic/Getty Images
One of the easiest ways to spruce up a room or piece of furniture is by giving it a new look with paint or stain. While painting is generally an easy process, even for amateur DIYers, it can also be incredibly slow and dull. Most rooms require a minimum of two coats of paint, not including the primer coat that some walls need, and depending on the paint and primer type you choose, it can take up to 24 hours for a coat to dry.
Luckily, if you have a battery-powered DeWalt fan in need of a task, you can use it to speed up the paint-drying process. It's best to avoid pointing the fan directly at a section of paint on the wall, mostly to prevent dust from sticking in the wet paint. Instead, the goal is to circulate air within the entire room by pointing the fan upwards, if possible. If your DeWalt fan can't rotate to point towards the ceiling, try placing it in an open window or as far away as possible from the freshly painted wall (which might be in the center of the room if all four walls are painted).
Similarly, you can use your DeWalt fan to accelerate the drying process for newly spackled holes, wet clothes and towels after a rainy day or a visit to the beach, or even rinsed fruits and vegetables, if your fan isn't too dirty or dusty.
Ventilate strong or offensive odors
m.dipo/Shutterstock
Another way to get the most out of a battery-powered DeWalt fan is to use it to clear out unwanted smells from your home, campsite, workplace, or wherever else you tend to bring your portable fan. This includes powerful and/or offensive odors like fumes from paint, stain, or strong cleaners, pet urine, feces, or vomit, and smoke from an accidental fire or new recipe testing gone wrong.
The best way to clear out an unwanted odor from your space is to position your DeWalt fan in an open window or doorway, blowing outwards. This helps move the odorous air out much faster than if you were to simply open a window or a door.
In a similar vein, a battery-powered fan can help circulate stagnant air in closed-off work areas that often don't have electrical outlets, like an attic or a closet. Circulating stagnant air improves the overall air quality where you're working, and it can help a room feel cooler and less stuffy.
Keep pesky bugs away from you
Photoroyalty/Shutterstock
There are plenty of awesome gadgets to keep bugs out of your home, both inside and outside, but some of these tools include a repellent with an off-putting smell or they require you to get down and dirty and do the bug-killing yourself. Or worse, there are bug sprays you can apply to your body, which are known for being sticky and smelly, plus they need to be reapplied over time. Instead of dealing with the stickiness of bug spray or the smell of traditional repellent gadgets, give your DeWalt battery-powered fan a try.
A fan is a surprisingly underrated bug deterrent. Fans don't require you to kill the bugs or make your skin uncomfortably tacky with bug spray, and yet, it's a highly effective tool for keeping bugs away from you. With a DeWalt focused on you, you'll be pleasantly free of all the annoying flying bugs because most of them aren't able to fight the fan's strong airflow. Plus, since the fan is powered by batteries, it's a convenient bug deterrent to cart around to campsites, a kid's sports game, or your own backyard.
Use the noise to help you fall asleep
Andrii Lysenko/Getty Images
If you have trouble falling asleep because of noises around you, like people talking or the sounds of nearby traffic, a white noise machine might be exactly what you need. White noise machines are an excellent tool for better sleep because they combine all frequencies to help drown out distracting sounds. There's scientific evidence that pink noise can help you sleep better as well, with one study finding that research subjects exposed to pink noise had more stable and restful sleep than the study's control group.
Noise machines aren't expensive, even if you spring for one that can switch between white, pink, and brown noise. But if you already have a battery-powered DeWalt fan on hand, why not use that instead? Fans naturally produce white or pink noise while their blades are spinning inside. The DeWalt 20V Max Jobsite Fan and most other fans made by DeWalt have variable speed control, which means you can better customize the frequency you want to fall asleep to. The faster a fan spins, the higher its frequency will be, and the opposite is true, too.
Plus, in addition to blocking out unwanted noise, running one of DeWalt's battery-powered fans when you're trying to go to sleep will keep you from getting too hot while you sleep. Recent research shows that sleeping in a cold room can help you fall and stay asleep by boosting melatonin production.
Maintain a tidy work area
Zephyr_p/Shutterstock
If you do a lot of sawing, sanding, or otherwise working with wood in a way that creates an abundance of sawdust, you might benefit from setting your DeWalt fan up in front of your work area. Wearing a mask while working helps prevent inhaling sawdust, but it does nothing for keeping your work area clean. By positioning a fan around your work station, you can consistently keep it clear of sawdust, wood shavings, and any other small particles, leaving you plenty of clean space to admire your work and see what still needs to be done.
When considering materials in the DIY and construction spaces, wood tends to accumulate the most dust, but it's certainly not the only material to do so. Using a fan can help blow away dust from concrete, drywall, cut tile, and multiple other materials, keeping your work space spotless as you go. Just make sure you keep papers, small screws, and any other lightweight materials away from the fan's path of airflow.
