Come the summer season, many homeowners alternate between fans and AC, but can ceiling fans cool a room? They do, and they don’t.
Do Ceiling Fans Help Cool a Room?
Fans don’t blow cold air like an AC unit does. But they can help move cold air around a room and move hot air out. By maintaining good airflow, a room with a ceiling fan won’t be stuck with hot, stagnant air.
How does a ceiling fan cool a room?
Fans cool you in two ways:
- Convection – Convection transfers warm air near our skin away from us, making us feel cooler.
- Wind Chill Effect – Wind from the fan evaporates your sweat quicker by moving air over your skin.
Fans don’t actually cool the air, they displace warm air to make you feel cooler. It’s learning fan placement for optimal air circulation that really makes a difference. Here are 4 ways to optimize ceiling fan rotation with air conditioning.
How to Use a Ceiling Fan to Cool Your Room
1. Try a Whole Room Circulator
Hot air rises. We’ve all heard this little science fact. So, it only makes sense that the cold air settles at the bottom of your home. This is where a whole room circulator fan comes in handy.
Circulator fans are designed to sit low on the floor. They push cool air up from down below, forcing it to circulate in the room. This helps cool your room and leaves less work for your AC. This is the best way to circulate air conditioning and the cool air already available in the room.
2. Check the Rotation
Ceiling fans rotate two ways. It’s not the direction that matters, so to speak, but the position of the fan blades. Ceiling fan blades are slanted, this pushes the air up or down. To cool a room, you need the air to push down away from the fan.
Ceiling fan direction in summer with air conditioning makes a big difference to how air circulates your home. Stand under your fan while it’s spinning to see if the air is blowing up or down. If you can’t feel the cool air, change the direction of the fan.
3. Position Fans Near the AC Vent
Learning how to position fans to cool a room with AC isn’t as hard as it sounds. Simply think about the way you would position a fan to cool a room with help from an open window. The same science works with your AC vents.
Positioning a fan near the AC vent, provides some added force to push cool air into your room, helping it circulate more thoroughly.
4. Set the Thermostat Higher to Save Money
Does running a ceiling fan cool a room? It helps make the room feel cooler, which means less AC power is needed to cool the air. Setting your thermostat to the same temperature as the air outside will save money on your energy bill while maintaining coolness.
When you use a fan, you don’t need to blast the AC. The fan helps distribute cool air, giving your AC unit less work to do.
Contact Guelph Climate Care to Learn More
Have questions about your home cooling options? Contact our experts today.