Whole house fan and high maintenance trees

I am getting really frustrated with trying to pick our a whole house fan. There is nobody to ask - it's a specialty item, and even the one good contractor we have has limited experience with them. Wile he certainly has the necessary skills to install one, he cannot advise me on where to place it or what kind to buy. There is nobody to assess your space and needs and advise you. I've crawled into the 130 degree attic numerous times to take measurements and try to figure out which models could go where. Today the temperature was in the 90's, and I was in the attic for a while. When I came down, I lowered my legs through the trap door and even though the house is significantly hotter than outside (it was probably over 100 degrees in the house), it felt like cold air on my skin because the attic is so hot.

Another frustration is the dearth of technical information on the manufacturers' websites. I don't understand how anyone could select a fan when basic measurement information is missing. In fact, I am wondering how anyone has a whole house fan given how hard it is to select and buy one. In addition to balancing all sorts of vague information like power, maintenance, sound, insulation, etc. there is the issue of which fan can be installed where. Some need a lot of vertical clearance, others less so. The louder ones we would need to install further from the living room, but we have less clearance there. In an place we want to put it, we have to balance what needs to be moved - smoke detector, duct work, electrical conduit, etc. All of this adds varying amounts to the installation charge and we don't have hard figures on how much. Ugh.

We are thinking of removing some or all of the palm trees in our front yard. The prior owner planted 7 of them on the front lawn and removed two city trees from the grassy strip between the street and sidewalk. The trees are such a high-maintenance mess. We just paid $150 to have them trimmed, and almost immediately, another branch dropped. The branches stay hidden in leaves that are wrapped up the trunk until they are ready to drop, and they are constantly in a cycle of dropping. Every month or so, we have to spend precious weekend time trimming those trees and as they grow the branches we are trimming get higher and higher. We had to trim one branch at 9:00 at night when C got home from work because it was threatening to drop on someone or on a car. I would not have picked these trees and don't love them enough to spend so much time on them.