Ceiling fans in Winter -- Weird Physics?
Hi All,
For a long time we have always run the ceiling fans on slow speed and backwards (flow upwards) for Winter to stir up the air as it seemed to me to make sense. We have electric baseboard heaters that are manually controlled per room with a rotary thermostat. We have 6" walls, double glazing, thick drapes etc.
Over the weekend with it being so cold, (high of 12F Brrrrrrr) I decided to do some testing and I found that running the ceiling fan in a room actually took longer for the room to come up to a comfortable temperature. Coming into a cold room (cold for 24 hours at least) and using an infrared spot thermometer I took temps on walls and ceiling at ten-spots around the room. That room has a 1000-Watt baseboard heater.
Running the fan it took 2-1/2-hours to come up from 48F to 72F with a max of +/-1F deviation.
Without the fan it took 1-hour 40-minutes fr the same result.
That surprised me, so I am now guessing the fan stirs up the air so well that it evenly heats every tiny part of the room, walls and ceiling. Without the fan, it just heats most of the livable space leaving corners nooks and crannies to warm up over longer time. I didn't think to measure right into the corners of the ceiling and floor etc.
It seems for years we have been wasting power with the baseboards by running the ceiling fans.
Any thoughts on this?