One of the few downsides to the heat during the summer is the rise of our utility bills (or so we think). While the average cost of running a ceiling fan takes up a fraction of the cost of running your air conditioner for an hour, it is difficult to compare these two types of cooling effects as they are completely different.
How Ceiling Fans Keep You Cool
To understand how ceiling fans may save you money on energy bills, it’s important to know how they work. Ceiling fans don’t cool the air around them, instead, they move the air in a room around which then creates a windchill effect. This is similar to the sensation that makes the wind feel cold.
Moving air helps to make you feel cooler by assisting your body’s natural cooling process through evaporation. Moving air helps to make moisture evaporate from your skin and in turn, makes you feel cooler. This means that a ceiling fan doesn’t actually lower the temperature of a room, so leaving one on in an unoccupied room has no effect and therefore wastes energy.
Although a ceiling fan’s job is to keep you cool, it’s not recommended to be a replacement for air conditioning, especially during hot North Carolina summers. As a best practice, we recommend using both your air conditioning and ceiling fan together to help keep your home’s interior temperature and energy bill low.
How Ceiling Fans Can Conserve Energy In Summer
Without changing your AC usage, ceiling fans can’t help conserve energy. The key to saving energy is reducing your air conditioning, by utilizing your ceiling fan, especially if you have an older system.
The key to saving energy in your home is by reducing the use of your air conditioning while also keeping your ceiling fan on when you’re in the room. This will help you save money and extend the life of your HVAC unit. Keep in mind that the windchill effect does make your space feel a few degrees cooler. Because of this, you can turn your thermostat up by 4 degrees when your fan is running and feel just as cool.
Ceiling fans are a great way to enhance year-round comfort alongside your HVAC system. When used in conjunction with one another, ceiling fans can help decrease energy costs and increase comfort.
If your energy bill is already skyrocketing before the heat of the summer, we recommend making an appointment with one of our service technicians so that they can check and potentially repair your HVAC system. Don’t wait until it’s too late, contact our team today to get your maintenance check-up scheduled.