Sunday, September 9, 2007

Saving Money on your Electric Bill with Ceiling Fans!

Okay, I have a confession to make! I can't believe myself! We just bought a ceiling fan last weekend for our bonus room and it was turning counterclockwise and we were like WOW, that is cool! I said OOPS, it is going the wrong direction! So my husband flipped the switch and "fixed" it! LOL It wasn't cool anymore. I said well it supposed to be clockwise for the summer and vice versa for the winter! Boy, how wrong I was!!! Embarrassed! I went to my friends house yesterday and ironically she had bought a new ceiling fan also for her guest room! Guess what? Her fan was turning the "wrong" direction to me also! Then, DUH (and seriously, I am not normally this stupid), well, I MUST BE WRONG, not everyone else and the breeze coming from the fan!!! So I looked it up to confirm my "wrong-ness" and yep! It read "MOST ceiling fans turn for a cool breeze counterclockwise in the summer and vice versa the winter!" Well, it is almost the end of summer here and we finally have all our fans going to the Real "RIGHT" way! Thank goodness! We DID lower our bill from last year to this year with better blinds and thick curtains, just IMAGINE how great it would have been if all the fans were turning the correct way! We were fighting ourselves! LOL

Anywho, I almost need a jacket now!!! Seriously!

Check you fans! :-)
(Again, these directions are for MOST fans, it depends on the tilt of the blade, probably as long as you don't have something super fancy the directions above will work for you! And if all else fails, go with your gut! Is it cooler?)

2 comments:

SAHMmy Says said...

You're not stupid! We have 6 ceiling fans in our house--the 4 old ones go clockwise (they are not all the same brand.) The 2 new ones go counterclockwise. I was going crazy when we installed the new fans, because they looked like they were turning the wrong way! My husband finally stood me under one of them so I could feel the breeze!

Jeremy Lowe said...

Actualy ceiling fans have little direct impact on utility bills with respects to the direct costs of running a coolling system...HOWEVER, they do lower the surface temperature of our skin which is evaporative cooling which in turns allows us to turn up the thermostat to a higher setting and maintain the same level if not a higher level of comfort with a higher thermostatic temperature.

I was actually going to blog about this on my HVAC tab because I co-wrote a utility savings study years ago that dealt in part with this, and it was the human reaction that saved the money not that the home was physically cooler. Neat eh? One day when I have some time I might pick up the subject but at the rate I am going....

I like the blog. Very informative and well written.