19th Sep 2014
By Julie CurnowCeiling Fan Day
There’s a day for everything it seems, and September 18 is National Ceiling Fan Day in the United States. It’s an awareness campaign designed to educate consumers about the benefits of fan usage and how they can save energy and money with fans year-round. It’s championed by several industry associations and energy reduction agencies in the US, and supported by hundreds of local suppliers and manufacturers.
While Air and Water Residential work with air conditioners and evaporative coolers, that’s not to say we’re not in favour of ceiling, or even pedestal fans.
In fact, when combined with your air conditioner or evaporative cooler, your fans can have quite an impact on circulating cooler air through your home, and keeping hot air from ‘hanging around’ the ceiling of your living areas and bedrooms.
Here’s a few tips for using fans to reduce the energy load on your air conditioners and evaporative coolers this summer:
- Open windows on the shady side of your house that can help spread cool breezes through your home in the early morning or late afternoon, as part of a pre-cooling routine. This reduces the overall temperature of your home and means the air conditioner won’t have to work as hard to achieve your pre-set temperature when you do decide to switch it on. Pedestal and Box fans work best when placed in front of a window and direct air into a room.
- To encourage cool air flow, you’ll need larger windows opening to the breeze and smaller, higher windows on the walls on the opposite side of the house.
- Having ceiling fans operating on a low setting during the night in a room also running air conditioning will help circulate the cooler air through to other areas of the house.
- Winter tip: fans that have a reverse setting can help push the warmer air that gets trapped near your ceiling down to warm up your rooms. This could save up to 10% on your heating costs (US statistic).
- Never use a fan to move hot air directly onto your body (like a giant sized hair dryer). This can cause heat exhaustion.