Your residential cooling system shoulders most of the burden of keeping your indoor living spaces comfortable. This can lead to some significant utility bills, however, as your air conditioner or heat pump works to keep up with cooling demand. By using ceiling fans in rooms where you and your family gather most often, you can reduce those bills and increase cooling efficiency.
Why Use a Ceiling Fan?
Ceiling fans provide a way to increase air circulation in the rooms where they are used. This helps move cool air that has settled near the floor, recirculating already conditioned air and giving it a second chance to reduce the temperature in the room.
The drafts of air from ceiling fans also provide direct cooling when they make contact with your body. The air from your ceiling fan helps perspiration evaporate on your skin, which carries away heat and keeps you cool. This effect makes the room feel cooler than it actually is, allowing you to run your air conditioner at a lower level while still maintaining consistent comfort.
Considerations When Using a Ceiling Fan
When using a ceiling fan, remember that the drafts created by the fan must make contact with your body for the cooling effect to take place. A ceiling fan doesn't cool a room. It cools a person.
Fan blade rotation should be adjusted to allow the fan to send down into the room below. This is most effective at directed drafts where they are needed. In the winter, you can switch fan blade direction to boost heating system performance.
Make sure there is enough clearance between the fan and the space below it to allow safe operation. Fan blades should be mounted at about seven feet or higher, and there should be 18 inches of space between the walls and blade tips.
Air Assurance provides top-quality heating and cooling services to customers in and around Tulsa. Contact us today for more information on how you can use a ceiling fan to boost cooling system efficiency and keep your indoor living environment more comfortable.
Our goal is to help educate our customers in the Tulsa and Broken Arrow, Oklahoma area about energy and home comfort issues (specific to HVAC systems). Credit/Copyright Attribution: “eak_kk/Pixabay”