Not only does a dirty ceiling fan run less efficiently than a clean one, but it can even scatter clumps of particles throughout the room. Knowing how to clean ceiling fan blades, globes, and chains is important for keeping your home's air cool and dust-free.
Over time, dust build-up can damage motors, cause unwanted vibrations, and shorten a fan's lifespan. A clean ceiling fan looks better and functions at peak efficiency.
Which way should a ceiling fan turn to keep you cool in the summer? During summer months, your ceiling fan blades should be set to spin counterclockwise. When your ceiling fan spins quickly in this direction, it pushes air down and creates a cool breeze.
How often should ceiling fans be cleaned? Ceiling fans should be dusted around once per week to prevent thick dust build up. Clean the ceiling fan more thoroughly with soap and water once per month to remove build up and prevent the fan from dispersing the dust around your home and into the air when you turn it on.
When a dirty and dust mite ridden fan circulates the air in your home, you then become susceptible to breathing in polluted particles. Clean fans are especially critical in homes with family members who suffer from allergies. Get in the habit of cleaning all the ceiling fans in your home.
Ceiling fans don't cool rooms.
They cool people. So running a ceiling fan in an empty room is a waste of energy. As a fan circulates air inside a room, you feel the breeze across your skin, and this makes you feel cooler. However, the temperature of the room hasn't changed at all.
(If you ever wondered why your ceiling fan blades attract dust, rather than flinging it around the room every time you start them up, you can blame static electricity for those layers of gray fuzz along the edge of the blades.)
A standard ceiling fan tends to last up to 10 years, but this will all depend on the quality of it and how you look after it.
If the blades on your ceiling fan are too small, they won't be able to generate enough airflow to make a difference. Likewise, if the blades are too big, they may create too much wind resistance and prevent the fan blade from spinning fast enough.
Not only does a dirty ceiling fan run less efficiently than a clean one, but it can even scatter clumps of particles throughout the room. Knowing how to clean ceiling fan blades, globes, and chains is important for keeping your home's air cool and dust-free.
Be smart, and do not overuse your ceiling fan
Sure, your ceiling fan can run throughout the day and night without issue, but running it for several days or months on end may not be the smartest choice and will reduce the overall lifetime of your fan.
Both Pledge and Endust are both pretty good at dusting, but they're better at different things. Endust really shines when it comes to getting rid of dust - it breaks down dust particles and captures about 90% of them on the first pass. You won't see those annoying dust trails that sometimes happen with regular cloths.
The Givoni or Woods diagrams show a direct relationship between air speed and the drop in temperature felt by users of the room. In this case, a ceiling fan will consume between 20 and 50 watts (still a long way from the consumption of an air-conditioning system (800 to 1500 watts, i.e. 30 to 40 times more).
As long as your fan is clean, sleeping with a fan on generally doesn't cause serious health problems. But fans circulate air that may dry your nose and throat, and trigger other uncomfortable symptoms.
It is myth that uses of ceiling fans while using air conditioners reduces the cool comfort in the room as ceiling fans tend to circulate hot air thus increasing the load on air conditioners. It's a common belief that ceiling fans should not be used along with Air Conditioners.
Ceiling fans come in a variety of wattages, but a standard 48-inch model uses about 75 watts per hour on average. This would cost you about $0.01 per hour, or $6 per month if you leave your ceiling fan on 24/7 all month.
Thanks to the cooling properties of ceiling fans, you can help to reduce your monthly energy costs. Most central air conditioning systems cost around 43 cents per hour when they're on, which can really add up over time. On the other hand, a ceiling fan typically costs a paltry one penny to run per hour.
The Disadvantages of Ceiling Fans
One of the downsides of ceiling fans is how noisy they can be. If you're trying to relax in a quiet room, the whirring sound of a ceiling fan can be distracting. And if you have a low ceiling, you may find the fan is too close to your head, making the noise even more noticeable.
Change the direction of your blades in the summer. Spin blades counterclockwise to push cool air down when it's hot. The moving air cools your skin. Making you feel about four degrees cooler.