When temperatures soar to their highest during the summer, homeowners are immensely grateful for the use of their central air conditioners. What most homeowners aren’t grateful for, though, are the high energy bills that come along with AC bills. They may try to use their air conditioners less, or hope to save energy by keeping unnecessary lights off (this helps, but not much!)
What if we told you that there was one, small, simple trick to boost your air conditioning efficiency? What’s that trick, you ask? Using your ceiling fans!
The Role of Fans in the Cooling Process
You likely already understand that fans help with cooling. After all, there is a fan within your air conditioner that helps with this process. But that fan alone does not keep you cool, and a ceiling fan doesn’t have the power to do this on its own either.
Your cooling system has various components that work along with each other to bring the temperature down. These components include:
- Refrigerant, which transfers the heat from inside your home to expel it outdoors.
- The indoor coil, which absorbs heat and cools the air down.
- A compressor, which adds pressure to the refrigerant to allow it to do its job.
Without each of these components working together to do their collective job, all a fan can do on its own is recycle warm, stale air that already exists in your living space. A fan isn’t capable of doing anything except move air. So, why are we devoting an entire blog post to this topic? Because, when ceiling fans are used in combination with your air conditioner, moving air is all a ceiling fan has to do!
Supplementing Cooling with Ceiling Fans
Your ceiling fans allow your air conditioning system to do a more effective job of evenly distributing conditioned air throughout your living space. They’re able to spread out the cool air you are already enjoying from your cooling system. This helps the system cycle off sooner, which is where efficiency comes in. Essentially, your air conditioner won’t have to work as hard to do its job over the course of the summer season, and therefore you’ll see a decline in your energy bills!
As we alluded to above, a ceiling fan alone cannot bring the temperature down in your home. Ceiling fans help you feel cooler, however. This is because they help sweat evaporate from your body with easy, which is how we cool off naturally. This is why we always feel cooler when standing directly in front of or under a fan.
“Can Ceiling Fans Hurt My Energy Efficiency?”
Ceiling fans are extremely beneficial, but yes, sometimes homeowners use them in a way that actually hurts efficiency instead of helping it. Ceiling fans are effective at bringing down the temperature when paired with an air conditioner, and cooling you off when you are in the room. If that room is unoccupied though, there’s no need to run the ceiling fan. In fact, keeping a ceiling fan on all day in a room or home that’s unoccupied can actually add heat due to the motor of the ceiling fan. When used correctly though, ceiling fans can boost both air conditioner efficiency in the summer and heating efficiency in the winter, too!
For expert AC services in Pittsburgh, call the friendly staff at Boehmer Heating & Cooling.