Don’t Use Your Ceiling Fans During the Winter

April 12th, 2007 • Related • Filed Under • by admin

I used to have a kitten that loved to sit under our living-room ceiling fan and watch the blades turn for hours on end. She was the most content kitten in the world when she sat under that fan. It provided her a lot of entertainment, and now I’m wondering if that’s just about all that ceiling fan was good for. The Interfaith Coalition on Energy has recently placed doubts on the effectiveness of ceiling fans to cool down rooms during the winter heating season, and I’m starting to see why.

We know that according to the laws of physics that heat rises. Cold air is more dense and has more mass, so naturally it tends to stay closer to the ground, and the lesser-dense warm-air will happily sit above it. In theory, a ceiling fan will force warm air down and make it mix with the cooler air at a medium level. They stay that this will cause the thermostat to reach the desired temperature sooner, and prevent less heat from being lost through the ceiling and into the attic.

The Interfaith Coalition for Energy believes that ceiling fans should have a rather low priority when compared to other energy saving measures. The reason for this is that the effect ceiling fans have on keeping a good mix of warmer and cooler air is rather inefficient. Warm air will always settle out to rise, and cooler air will always be closer to the ground. Throwing a ceiling fan into the equation will only create an additional demand of electricity, which will cost you money.

There are plenty of other things that you can do to make your home more efficient in retaining the heat generated by the furnace in your home. You could weather-strip the windows, make sure there are no gaping holes anywhere, and the like. You should keep your window blinds open during the day to create a greenhouse effect and then shut them at night to help trap heat in. You might consider not heating un-used rooms, or perhaps making it so that the majority of your hot air comes through the vents on the lower floor. You’ll have to do some research on how to make your home more economical, and it can be done, but throwing your ceiling fans on probably isn’t the best way to go about increasing the efficiency of your home heating environment.