Believe it or not, combining air conditioning with a ceiling fan can actually save you money without sacrificing any of the comforts!
Invented back in the 1880s for commercial usage ceiling fans were initially used to cool hotels and factories. By the early 20th century, they had made their way into the houses of the upper classes. This was long before air conditioning systems became the norm. Even today ceiling fans are still popular and are best used as an accompaniment to A/C units, not in addition to.
Adopting the same wintery principles
Exploiting the very same principles that make the temperature on a winter’s day seem even colder through wind chill, a ceiling fan moves cool air around the room and across the skin. As it does this it disperses body heat and intensifies our perception of coolness by evaporating perspiration. As such, if you placed a thermometer in a room with a ceiling fan, it may display a temperature of say 26 degrees when in fact it might feel a few degrees cooler.
How to combine a ceiling fan with air conditioning
When the A/C is running ceiling fans can be used to circulate the cool air around the room and over the skin making people feel even cooler. This allows you to turn down the core temperature of your A/C so instead of running at 17 degrees you can run it at 22. As long as you keep the ceiling fan on to distribute the airflow, you probably won’t even notice a difference.
So how much money on electricity can this save you?
It’s thought that in an average home, for every single degree you can push up the thermostat, you’ll reduce the number of ‘on’ cycles (eg, when cold air is actually pumping) by up to 10%. This may not sound like much but let’s take an average A/C unit in an average home – The cost to run your average air conditioning unit is around 46 cents an hour. A ceiling fan on the other hand costs less than 1 cent an hour to operate. If you can push up the A/C thermostat by as much as 4 degrees that’s a saving of around 17 cents. Minus the 1 cent (more or less) that the ceiling fan costs to run and you’ve got yourself a saving of around 16 cents per hour. If we say that the average A/C unit runs around 6 hours a day during the approaching summer months, that’s a saving of around $30 per month, all of which has been achieved with no perceived loss of cooling comfort.
One final thing to remember – Ceiling fans don’t actually cool the air, they just circulate it, therefore, running a ceiling fan when there’s no one in the room is pretty pointless. Instead, if you switch them on and off just like lights you’ll save yourself even more money.
If you need help in air conditioning or ceiling fan installation or need advice on best running practices, contact Static Electrics today on 0488848940. We ensure if highly skilled technicians deliver prompt service and a job well done!
