Ceiling fans? Isn’t that what central heat and air are for? Not so fast!
How would you like to save costs on your air conditioning in the summer and save money on heating costs in the winter? Stick around. We’re about to address why ceiling fans are an essential product for any energy-efficient household.
If you’ve noticed your savvy friends fiddling with the direction of their fan and wondered why we’re going to break down why ceiling fan direction can save you money every winter of summer to come.
Certainly, you could use the extra coin in your pocket, right?
Think Ceiling Fans Are Only Built for Warmer Weather Climates? Think Again!
Close your eyes. Imagine a place with a ceiling fan. Got it?
Did you imagine a place by the beach, maybe some palm trees hanging around, and wearing those funny looking shirts while sipping fruity island drinks?
While we may imagine that ceiling fans are essential in warm weather climates, the truth is ceiling fans are a great resource no matter where you live.
Thanks to the second law of thermodynamics, ceiling fans can warm up a room. That’s right! That device you’ve been using for so long to cool down the room isn’t actually making your room any cooler.
If that’s true, why do we often think of ceiling fans being used in warmer weather climates? The truth lies in how ceiling fans actually cause a cooling sensation. See, ceiling fans don’t cool the room. They cool our bodies.
That leads us to why the way you use ceiling fans is so important.
How to Use Science to Your Advantage
Now that you know that ceiling fans actually warm a room instead of cooling a room, you may wonder why more cold-weather climates aren’t packed with ceiling fans. After our research, we were wondering the same thing.
The truth is, people, don’t often consider the science behind their little swirling furnaces above their heads. They just see a fan.
Let’s go back to the second law of thermal dynamics. The second law of thermal dynamics is known as the law of entropy. You can think of entropy as disorder or chaos. In the second law of thermal dynamics, entropy is ALWAYS increasing.
When entropy increases, things go whacky. How whacky? Heat ALWAYS flows from hotter to cooler.
We know what you’re thinking. So? How does this work to my advantage? The answer lies in the direction of airflow. If you can control the flow of air, you can produce dramatic results using SCIENCE!
So Why Do We Use Ceiling Fans to Cool a Room?
The truth is, we don’t. Ceiling fans make a room warm. The effect of a ceiling fan is its airflow. If a ceiling fan is blowing over your hot skin, there is a cool effect of the airflow on your skin. In this way, ceiling fans are effective in two ways:
- They aid in evaporative cooling of our bodies.
- They aid in convective cooling of our bodies.
The cool sensation we feel isn’t the room. It’s our bodies. Cool, huh?
Here’s an example of evaporative cooling most people have experienced. Imagine you just got out of the pool on a warm day. The water on your skin begins to evaporate on the skin due to the sun’s warm temperature leaving us feeling cooler. That’s evaporative cooling.
Now, let’s look at convective cooling. This video does a great job of explaining how fans create convection currents. Basically, because energy cannot be created nor destroyed when you have heat in a room, hotter molecules expand, and as they expand, they rise. Cooler particles fill in the space, and the cycle begins again, creating a convection current.
Did you ever think fans would be so interesting?
Knowing this bit of information, we can control the airflow of our ceiling fans to our advantage. As you may have guessed, it has to do with our savvy friend’s idea of changing the direction of their fan blades for the desired result.
What Ceiling Fan Direction Is Best for Summertime?
If you’re looking for that cool summertime savings, you’ll want to have your ceiling fan set to run in a counter-clockwise motion. Why? It all goes back to the convection current we just discussed.
When fans turn in a counter-clockwise motion, they push the cool air down. This creates a wind chill effect on our skin as the air circulates. Online reports indicate that using a fan in counter-clockwise motion can save anywhere from 8% up to 40% on air conditioning costs.
When the blades are set to rotate counter-clockwise, the cool air is pushed below the fan, usually in the center of the room. That creates a current when the airflow pushes down to the floor, spreads out towards the walls, creating that draft we feel, and then rises to the ceiling.
This begins, again and again, creating a convection current.
What Ceiling Fan Direction Is Best for Wintertime?
Well, at this point, it probably doesn’t take a genius to figure out that in the winter, we should set our fan blades to the clockwise position. Why? Because this creates the opposite effect. Instead of the cool air being pushed down below the fan, it’s wafted up towards the ceiling.
That creates a convection current where the warm air the fan actually produces can be pushed down to its toasty customers below. Therefore, you’re using the ceiling fan for its added benefits, thanks to your understanding of science.
Simply set your pergola fan or any other fan you like to the clockwise position and feel the warmth of your ceiling fan in the wintertime. Genius!
Changing your ceiling fan direction to clockwise during the winter can save 15% on heating prices.
Your Ceiling Fan Direction Can Save You Money Every Year!
Understanding the science behind your ceiling fan direction can save you every year on air conditioning and heating costs. If you thought ceiling fans are only helpful in warm weather clients, think again! Ceiling fans can offer savings no matter where you live!
If you found this article helpful, be sure to check out the rest of our blog.
