Skip navigation

Serving The Greater
Coeur D’Alene & Spokane Area

Serving The Greater Coeur D’Alene & Spokane Area

Menu

ACI Northwest Blog

Can a Ceiling Fan Improve Heating Efficiency?

wooden ceiling fanThe Deer Park, WA electricians on our team certainly know their stuff. As such, we’re eager to answer any questions you may have about your electrical system, and also please to provide you with tips and advice that can save you money while making you feel more comfortable in your home. Today, we’d like to share with you a little-known fact about ceiling fans: they help improve HVAC efficiency and keep you warmer in the winter (and cooler in the summer).

Keep reading to learn more about the details of how your ceiling fan improves both summertime comfort and wintertime comfort. And if you’d like more information or have any questions, reach out to our team today!

First, How Fans Help the Cooling Process

As you know, there is a fan within your home’s air conditioner. That fan alone does not keep you cool, nor can a ceiling fan keep you cool all on its own. There are a number of components working together within your cooling system to bring you the comfort you desire, such as:

  • Refrigerant to transfer heat from the inside air and expel it outdoors.
  • An indoor coil to help absorb heat and cool down.
  • A compressor that adds pressure to the refrigerant so it can do its job.

Without these components, and more, all any fan can really do is recycle the warm, stale air already present in your living space. A fan does nothing but move air around—but that’s all it needs to do when used in conjunction with your AC system.

A fan helps you save money on your cooling costs.

It does this by doing a better job of evenly distributing the air produced by your AC system. A stagnant vent alone on the wall can’t move air through a home as effectively as you’d like, in most cases. But this is what makes a ceiling fan so useful!

Ceiling fans help to distribute cool air, cooling the rooms faster and allowing your AC system to shut off sooner, ultimately reducing your monthly utility bills. As we mentioned, a ceiling fan alone cannot cool a home, but it can help you feel cooler. This is because it helps sweat to evaporate from our bodies with ease, and that’s how our bodies cool off naturally. This is why you feel cooler standing in front of a fan, not because it’s actually cooling the air.

Using a Ceiling Fan for Heating

Okay, now that you understand the process, what does this have to do with your heating efficiency? Well, your ceiling fan has a switch on it—most often found near the center of the fan where the light fixture mounts—that changes the direction of the fan blades. The clockwise direction actually helps to move heat more evenly throughout the living space. Some advanced ceiling fans may even have an additional wall switch, or on a remote control, that you can use to reverse the direction of the fan blades.

When using your ceiling fan in this manner, your heater doesn’t have to work as hard, thus working more efficiently and saving you money!

ACI Northwest is here to help with your home comfort needs or concerns.

Please do not hesitate to contact us for helpful advice.

Comments are closed.