A ceiling fan is more than just decoration for your home. This functional decorative element also helps keep your home and its inhabitants cool and comfortable throughout North Carolina’s hot summers. However, that’s not all that the average ceiling fan is capable of. Having a ceiling fan can save money on utility costs, lowering your monthly bill by a significant amount.

What a Ceiling Fan Does

To understand how a ceiling fan can save money, it’s important to know how a ceiling fan operates once properly installed in your home. Ceiling fans come in a wide variety of styles and sizes, ranging from small, compact designs to oversized designs that use their larger blades to move greater volumes of air at lower velocities.

The average ceiling fan takes advantage of how natural breezes help people feel cool and comfortable in warm weather. Using its blades to circulate the surrounding air and create a draft, the ceiling fan effectively re-creates a cooling breeze throughout the room. This breeze offers a wind chill effect that makes you feel cooler and more comfortable.

How Ceiling Fans Provide Savings

If you’re used to having your air conditioner do all the work when it comes to cooling down your home, a ceiling fan can help take some of the load off of your A/C and help you save money on energy costs in the process. With the air conditioning on, the ceiling fans help keep cooler air circulated throughout the room while providing its own cooling effect. As a result, running a ceiling fan at regular speeds gives you the opportunity to raise your thermostat by four degrees or more without any loss in comfort.

On moderately warm days, you may not even need your air conditioner. Thanks to the ceiling fan’s wind chill effect, you can feel cooler without relying on the A/C for that momentary blast of cool air. During the evenings and at night, when temperatures fall as much as 10 to 15 degrees, you can sleep under the ceiling fan at high speed instead of relying on the A/C to keep you comfortable.

Those moments when you don’t need as much air conditioning, if any at all, eventually add up to significant savings. Experts say that the average homeowner can save up to 40 percent of their cooling costs by installing and operating a ceiling fan throughout the warm weather season. Having one or more ceiling fans in your home is one of the simplest and most energy-efficient ways of keeping your home cool and comfortable on a hot summer’s day.

Ceiling Fan Tips

It’s crystal clear that a ceiling fan can save money on cooling costs, but there’s always plenty of room for improvement. The following tips can help you get the most out of your ceiling fan and enjoy superb savings in the process:

Remember that ceiling fans are designed to help people feel cooler. They won’t do much to lower actual room temperatures. With this in mind, turn off the ceiling fan in unoccupied rooms for maximum energy savings.
The larger the blade, the more likely it’s able to offer comparable cooling at lower speeds than a ceiling fan equipped with smaller blades. For areas where loose papers and other unsecured objects are most affected by strong winds, ceiling fans with larger blades and lower speeds make more sense.
When it comes to buying ceiling fans, cheaper isn’t always better. By investing a little more money in a slightly more-expensive but higher quality unit, you’ll most likely get several more years of trouble-free service. Such units also tend to be quieter and smoother than their cheaper yet noisier counterparts.
Look out for the Energy Star label. Units with such labeling are usually 20 percent more efficient than standard ceiling fans.
Proper placement and installation is the key to an effective and efficient ceiling fan. Ceiling fans should be installed at least seven to nine feet above the floor and the blades should be 10 to 12 inches below the ceiling.

Contact the professionals at Bass Air Conditioning Company and learn about how having the right ceiling fan can save money on energy costs throughout the summer. We proudly offer our cooling expertise to residents throughout Spring Lake, Fayetteville, Lumberton and the surrounding areas.