With the heat finally here in Sacramento it's time to start looking at our methods of keeping our homes effectively cooled. Many homes in the California Central Valley have ceiling fans, but a large majority of folks out there are not educated on how they can get the most efficiency from their ceiling fans.
Ceiling fans can rotate either
clock-wise or
counter clock-wise and each direction serves a different purpose.When using your ceiling fan for cooling purposes, it's very important that you have your fan set to rotate counter clock-wise allowing for the fan to create a breeze that makes your body feel cooler. Ceiling fans are meant to cool people, not rooms... the cool breeze effect will allow you to raise the thermostat of your A/C reducing usage, but a ceiling fan is not designed to cool a room, only people in the room.
A lesser known use for a ceiling fan is warm air circulation in winter when home heating is necessary. When you are heating a room in cold seasons, a ceiling fan can be switched to rotate clock-wise allowing for the rising warm temperature in a room to be pulled down from the ceiling and distributed throughout the room. It is very important that when using a ceiling fan for warming a room you should keep the fan speed very low or else you'll be feeling a breeze that's more useful in warmer seasons.
Just like any appliance, ceiling fans also have ratings for efficiency and some even come backed by
ENERGY STAR. Make sure you you get the best out of your ceiling fan(s)... they've stood the test of time for a reason and who really doesn't like to get the most out of something?
