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Don’t you ever get tired of having a synthetic climate feeling that drags on from your workplace up to the home? You know you are missing the natural climate when you start to feel more stressed with the makeshift comfort from the air-conditioner or the heater and just want to go outside for that natural breeze even for just a while.
Some cannot take the hot and humid weather or the cold breeze while for others, a ceiling fan is all they need to enjoy the natural climate regardless of season and save a lot on electricity.
Getting to Know the Heating and Cooling Principle
Which is more stressful to you? Having a makeshift comfortable environment from an air-conditioner or heater that sort of disconnects you from nature and everything else outside or feeling the natural climate with a little bit of help from ordinary ceiling fans?
This question might actually get you into thinking. Most of us today think that it is way too impossible to survive any kind of weather without two of the most in-demand heating or cooling appliances (HVAC) today – the air-conditioner and a heater.
While there is some truth to this especially on those over the top or way below normal temperatures, you do not have to rely on heating and/or cooling appliances all the time. Surely, there will be more forgivable days when you can sit back and enjoy the natural climate as it is.
To make you understand this better, let us talk about the heating and cooling principles a bit. In knowing this and being educated on such topic, you will understand more how the cold or hot air accumulates in a room, what direction it goes, and which direction your ceiling fan should go to disperse or spread it.
Are you even aware that moving air in your room can remove heat and even cool the body? Yes, this is absolutely true. All you need is proper ventilation and you can even conserve energy yet still be ultimately comfortable. You can use both natural things like those of trees and more mechanical measures like that of ceiling fans to move air and increase comfort.
Natural ventilation is a very effective way of cooling up especially during the hot summer months. However, you would have to rely on wind to blow through the windows and the doors. What happens on those days that even the wind is gone? Go turn on the ceiling fan to create some sort of wind chill effect to make your home comfortable.
The chimney effect is the most popular way of cooling up one’s place during the hot summer months. This is what happens when cool air enters the basement or lowest part of the house, absorbs the heat that is currently in the room, and exits through the windows or openings at the upper part of the house.
Remember what we always say about warm air being located at the upper part of house? That applies each and every time so if this chimney effect continues, warm air is constantly removed and is replaced by a cooler air.
If you want a chimney effect, you better have a ceiling fan installed at the lower portion of the house which will create a stir in the stagnant warm air inside and pull it upwards. In addition, ceiling fans do create a wind chill effect that makes natural climate so much easier to deal with.
Passive but Efficient Cooling through Ceiling Fans
There are several states across the country where constant form of cooling is needed but not so much to the point that you would have to turn on the air-conditioner every single day of the year. If you think you live in one of these states, you might want to consider getting a ceiling fan instead.
Technically, you have a whole lot of choices for cooling. There is proper ventilation, shading, insulation, thermal mass, and the use of bigger windows. All these are known as passive cooling where it does not absolutely cool the area but definitely helps cool it, therefore, the passive word.
Having a ceiling fan falls into the category of proper ventilation and it also means a more practical way of cooling an area with regards to financial and environmental terms. Ceiling fan promotes constant air movement which is the most important element of passive cooling. By the constant air movement, evaporation is increased and heat is carried upwards while a cooler air replaces its place inside the room.
How to Find an Efficient Ceiling Fan
A few years ago, a guideline was released on how to better search for the right ceiling fan that would work excellently in cooling homes even during the hottest days of the summer. In this guideline, it is said that all ceiling fans with the same swept diameter will have the same airflow regardless of its design and distance from ceiling or from floor.
If you find a 900-mm ceiling fan, you can expect a maximum cooling temperature of 1.6 degrees. For a 1200-mm fan, it will be 2.4 degrees and a higher 2.6 degree cooling capacity for a 1400-mm ceiling fan. However, this may still vary depending on several room factors like ceiling height and the number of furniture within the target area.
Once you have found a suitable ceiling fan, do always keep in mind to have the blades rotating in a counter clockwise manner during summer to achieve a cool breeze and put it in reverse or clockwise manner at a slow motion when winter comes so that the warm air will be pulled up and forced down against the walls. This will disperse the warm air but not give a wind chill effect.