Electricity costs are climbing, and so are temperatures – thanks to climate change, summers in the U.S. are 1.7 degrees Fahrenheit hotter than they used to be. But you don’t need to keep paying more and more for air conditioning – that’s no good for your bank account or the environment. You don’t need to simply suffer in the heat, either. There’s another option.
You can install ceiling fans in your home. Ceiling fans can make it feel several degrees cooler in your home, so you can turn the thermostat up, save money, and reduce your carbon footprint. In the winter, ceiling fans can help you save money on heating costs, too. Lower your energy costs and make your life more comfortable with ceiling fans – here’s how.
Stop Overpaying for Climate Control
With summers across the U.S. and around the world getting hotter, it makes sense to want better climate control. But the hotter it is outside, the more it costs to cool your home using window air conditioners or central air. At least, with window units, you can turn them off when you leave the room, which helps keep costs down. But neither window air conditioning units nor central air are particularly cheap.
A window air conditioner draws about 1.2 kilowatts and costs about $0.14 an hour to operate. That adds up to $50.40 a month, and that’s if you’re only running the unit for 12 hours a day. A central air conditioner costs $0.36 an hour to run, adding up to $129.60 a month if you run it 12 hours a day.
The cost of operating a ceiling fan is considerably less. The average ceiling fan in the U.S. is 50 to 54 inches wide and draws about 33 watts. A ceiling fan of this size and wattage costs about $0.004 an hour to run. That adds up to about $2.53 a month, but you’ll only pay that much if you’re running the fan all day and all night for the whole 30 days. Most people only use fans when they’re in the room, so even if you keep your bedroom ceiling fan on all night every night, the difference to your energy bill will be negligible.
Turn Down Your HVAC
Of course, just because you have new ceiling fans doesn’t mean you’re going to want to stop using your air conditioning entirely. But you could turn your thermostat up a lot and be just as comfortable with the cool breezes that your new ceiling fan will create. Most homeowners find that they can turn their thermostat up by as many as four degrees in the summer when using ceiling fans to circulate the air in the home.
The savings can last into the winter season, too. Most fans have a switch on the outside of the fan motor housing that you can use to reverse the direction of the fan blades. They should spin counterclockwise in the summer, which creates a cooling downdraft. The wind chill effect that this creates helps keep you cool, even when the thermostat is turned up.
In the winter, you can switch the direction of the blades so that they spin clockwise. This creates an updraft that shifts the warm air that rises up to your ceiling, pushing it back down to the floor level where you can feel it. You might be so cozy that you decide to turn your thermostat down in the winter, too. For every degree that you turn down your thermostat, you can save about three percent on your heating bill.
Turning down your heating and cooling can reduce your carbon footprint, too. Lowering your thermostat by as little as one degree in the winter can reduce your carbon output by as much as 350 kilograms or 772 pounds. With air conditioning accounting for 117 million metric tons of the carbon dioxide pollution created by the U.S. each year, the environment will thank you for turning your thermostat up a few degrees and switching on the fan instead.
If you’re looking for a way to cut your energy costs this summer, while still staying nice and cool, you need to seriously consider installing ceiling fans in your home. Fans are economical, sustainable, and stylish. You can use fans to keep your house cooler in the summer and warmer in the winter, without adjusting the thermostat. It’s time to give ceiling fans a try.
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