Do ceiling fans help cool room?

Question

best way to cool whole house

Answer 1

No they don't, but they feel as if they do. Because of the "wind chill effect" – it doesn't actually lower the temperature of the room but instead makes you feel cooler by accelerating the evaporation of perspiration on your skin. Likewise, by running one of our ceiling fans in reverse, you can distribute the hot air that rises to the ceiling and becomes trapped–thus making the temperature of the room feel warmer. The motor on the fan generates heat and could possibly make the room warmer.

Answer 2

I’ve been in the ceiling fan business for over 20 years and I still get asked this question almost every day…

Ceiling fans do not actually change the temperature in a room. If you place a thermometer beneath a fan, you generally will not see a change in the temperature. However, if you are running a window air conditioner in a nearby room you may see a change in temperature only because the fan is moving the air throughout the two rooms and bringing cooler air into the room where the fan is.

As others have correctly noted, ceiling fans mostly create a wind chill effect, which is what happens when the breeze created by the fan pulls perspiration away from your body, allowing your body's own cooling system to work more effectively. That’s why we all like a little breeze outside during the hot summer.

Even more, if you use ceiling fans along with central air conditioning, you can raise the thermostat about 10 degrees without noticing a decrease in your level of comfort. Since a ceiling fan costs about 3 cents/hour to operate and an air conditioner can cost as much as $1.00/hour to operate (depending on it's efficiency), there is considerable money to be saved by augmenting your air conditioning with the use of ceiling fans.

Finally, not all ceiling fans are created equally, so some fans will make you feel substantially cooler than others simply because they are designed to move more air. This has to do with the power and quality of the motor inside the fan combined with the shape and pitch (angle) of the blades. Poorly designed fans have small weak motors with blades that are nearly flat, so they don't move much air. Good quality high performance ceiling fans have much more powerful motors with blades that have a steep pitch to them and that are fine tuned as far as weight and aerodynamics. But plan on paying a premium price for the better fans, which cost about $300 and up (you need to go to a specialty fan dealer, not your local home center to find them).

Sorry if I went a little overboard…

Answer 3

Technically, a fan does neither warm or cool a room, it only moves the air around. That said, cooling is usually achieved with the breeze coming DOWN on you. Reversing the fan (thus sucking air up against the ceiling) will make for a move evenly distributed warmth but I never really believed in that since the slight draft it creates has a perceived cooling effect again. Guess it does work best when you have a door to a warmer room open so the fan will suck in the warmer air.

Answer 4

Ceiling fans dont cool rooms, they cool people. The fans create an effect known as "wind chill". There is a thin layer of heat around your body, it is... in a way... stuck to you, when you remove that thin layer, with a breeze, you feel cooler.

If you are interested you can find more technical answers on the internet.

For you concern, a ceiling fan will make a person in a room feel cooler. If the windows are open the fans will help create a cross breeze in the house, (bring cooler air inside), If you have the air conditioner on it will allow you to use less energy, by having the ac set on a higher temperature. Instead of setting the air on 76 you can set it on 79 and it will feel the same, using less energy.

Answer 5

Ceiling fans help cool or warm a room, depending on the direction the blades are moving. heat rises, so if you want to warm the room up, you turn it to circulate the air from the top to the bottom. If you want to cool the room, you set it in the opposite direction.

Answer 6

They help immensely. We have one in each bedroom, the living room and 2 on the patio. I live in Florida and it helps to keep down the electric bills. We don't have to keep the air on so cold when we have the fans on.

Answer 7

Yes, as long as there spinning the correct way. I believe clockwise for cooling

Answer 8

Yes, they help a lot to keep the air moving and circulating.

Answer 9

yes