Ceiling Fans can Serve an Important Role in the Winter
Here’s a tip you’ll only get from the better HVAC companies in the Greater Cincinnati area. In most homes, when the heating season arrives, family members just turn off and forget about their ceiling fans for the winter. They figure they no longer need the cooling effect of moving air that happens during warmer weather. They don’t realize that a ceiling fan – with its blade rotation adjusted properly – also can help make a home more comfortable and energy efficient during the winter.
As most of us understand, a ceiling fan operating during warm weather will create a cooling effect as it blows air toward humans (or animals) in a room. We use the word “effect,” since the fan operation isn’t really lowering the temperature. It just makes the air feel a few degrees cooler.
The fan operation can help you save energy and ease your AC’s workload when you turn the thermostat up a few degrees. When you use your cooling system less, you’ll see lower energy bills and need fewer AC repairs. Because of the fan’s cooling effect, you won’t lose any comfort.
The same effect doesn’t happen during the heating season; the ceiling fan’s movement of air doesn’t make the air “feel” warmer. However, that doesn’t mean you can’t benefit from a ceiling fan in the winter – you just need to switch the blade rotation from counter-clockwise to clockwise.
Get Wintertime Help from Your Ceiling Fans
When the weather turns cold, climb up a ladder (with a reliable spotter underneath) and look for the switch on the ceiling fan housing. This controls the direction that the fan blades rotate. The default setting, for warm-weather operation, is counter-clockwise.
When you adjust the switch to clockwise blade rotation, this can help heat your home in the following manner:
- Rather than blowing air downward, the fan now will blow upwards, pushing air toward the ceiling.
- This is where warmer air collects in a room, until it’s displaced by the air being blown upwards by the ceiling fan.
- The warm air now moves down into the room where people can feel it.
- The thermostat also can “feel” the warmer air, delaying its signal to kick on the heating equipment that much longer.
- This saves energy, lowers your heating bill, and lessens the workload on your furnace or heat pump.
- Unlike in the summer, when you should adjust the thermostat setting to compensate for the cooling effect created by the blowing fans, during winter operation, there’s no need to adjust the thermostat when the fans are rotating clockwise and blowing air upwards.
- The thermostat will detect the change itself and just not turn on the heating system as quickly as it would otherwise.
This means your system will run fewer stop-and-start cycles, while operating for less time. This is important since the most energy is used when the furnace, AC or heat pump kicks on.
Winter and Summer Ceiling Fan Benefits
So in the case of fan operation in the summer, energy is conserved as a result of the “cooling effect” of moving air, whereas in the winter, energy is saved because the room – or the lower parts of the room where people spend their time – really does get warmer.
Another difference between the benefits of ceiling fan operation in summer and winter is that in the former, a ceiling fan operating in an empty room is just wasting energy.
Without somebody in the room to feel the cooling effect, it’s not really accomplishing anything. The cooling effect is instantaneous, so leaving the fan on is just as wasteful as leaving lights on in an empty room.
In the winter, on the other hand, if you turn off the ceiling fan as you’re leaving a room, the air will cool and the thermostat detecting the cooler air will signal the heat to turn on sooner than it might otherwise, unnecessarily consuming energy.
Don’t Forget to Adjust Blade Rotation when the Seasons Change
One important tip, however: When spring arrives and the weather begins warming, don’t forget to switch the fan blade rotation back to counter-clockwise. Otherwise, you’ll have the fan blowing upwards throughout the summer, which definitely won’t accomplish anything.
One fun game is to check out ceiling fan rotation when visiting homes or businesses. You might be surprised to see how often folks have neglected to adjust the blade rotation properly. You can obtain an immense feeling of superiority by pointing this out (or you might just get tossed out on your ear).