Running Fans and the Cost of Elec.

A fan will help circulate air and can help bring in the cool air, but technically however, fans cool people, not rooms. But running a fan would be cheaper than using the ac.

I run mine all the time whether is summer or winter just to keep the air circulating. The only way to test how much power they use is to shut them down for a month and see if you notice a difference. They circulate the warm air and the cool if you flip the switch on them each season. Winter time they should go backwards.

I heard not too long ago, it's like 9 cents an hour to run a ceiling fan. Here's a link
http://www.ceilingfan.com/Cost_comparison.htm

I don't know the answer (but have heard it's not as great a difference as we think). I just have a different perspective at the moment.

Right now it's in the low 30s here. I'm still looking at about a foot & a half of snow outside my kitchen window (down from about 4 feet -- so we're getting somewhere!). There's talk of more snow on Monday. My husband has destroyed both wrists with all the shoveling (& Lord knows my back has been better!). Each tankful of home heating oil is running about $700. We've been debating the electric costs of running heated buckets to the barn vs. the physical costs of lugging hot water & hacking through frozen buckets. And it's only February -- we have another 6 weeks of winter anyway and at least 2 months before we're pretty sure of being past the snow point.

I so envy you the dillema of leaving windows open & using the fan or just turning on the AC!

* sigh *

I'm sure running a fan is cheaper than running an ac, but I agree with Brooke. I don't think running a fan actually cools the room, I think it just cools whoever is under it at the time. So, I always turn mine off when I leave the room.

As others have said, the fan does nothing to actually cool the air...... you feel cool because of the air blowing on you.

I turn the fans off when I leave the room.

We also use window AC units instead of the whole house AC compressor (ours broke over a year ago and we haven't gotten it replaced yet.. too expensive), so we have units in most of the rooms. We just cool the rooms we are in, instead of the entire house. (Except before bed... we turn the unit on in our bedroom a couple of hours before we go to bed so it is cool when we are ready to sleep.) Even last summer, with 7 people living here, our bills were MUCH cheaper than when we used the central AC unit. (We bought a bunch of window units at garage sales, estate sales, craigslist, etc. for $20-80 each, so we spent less than $300 on all of them.)

I'm pretty sure the difference, if any, is minimal. I say, stay comfortable!

We leave our ceiling fans on year round. In the Winter months they blow the air up and in the Summer they blow the air down. We flip the switch after a good dusting whenever we need the air to go a different way.

Blowing the air up brings the cool air off the floor up under the fan and pushes the warm air on the ceiling down along the walls. In the Summer it blows the cool air on the floor all over the room and pushes the hot air off the ceiling down to be cooled.

They don't use even a few dollars a month and really help us keep our elec. bills down in summer, plus the gas in Winter.

I read that "air conditioners cool rooms, fans cool people", meaning that the fan does no good if the person is absent. I can't prove it scientifically, it's just what I read, but it makes sense to me. You're right about keeping the room cool rather than having it warm up and having to cool it.

Also, if you pay the bills it doesn't matter what your 21 year old says. It's your decision, not his.

If you go to your local power company's web site they usually have "a how much it cost's to run" list of different appliances. I did this awhile ago, I was worried about the fan too because I sleep with one running, I need the noise. I've been sleeping with a fan for over 20 years and two of my kids do too. If I remember correctly it wasn't the fans that pull a ton of energy. But it did have some surprises as to what does. I remember the dishwasher was the #1 thing that sucked energy...maybe you could tell him..."Thanks so much for the fan thing i looked it up and actually the dishwasher is the worst, so from here on out we are going to need you to do dishes by hand"..LOL!

If you're running the fans and don't actully need them to circulate the air and keep it cooler, it is a waste of electricity.

But, if you are running them to keep from having to use the a/c or to be able to keep the a/c at a higher setting (warmer), then you are saving electricity.

The a/c does cost more to run than the fans.

Edit: It shouldn't matter if you are in the room or not, the air is still circulating and helping to keep the a/c from having to run as much. We leave ours on 24/7 when the a/c is on or if we have the window open and it's a little warmer (such as now), so we don't have to turn on the a/c. We do sometimes use them on reverse when we have the heater on. I like the feeling of the air circulating, and it does help get the warmer air at the top of the room moved further down to the bottom of the room.

My husband is an engineer and always gets on us about leaving the fans on. Yes, he says it wastes electricity and has no benefit at all if you are not in the room.
If we are in the room and the fan is on, ok. If we step out and forget to turn it off, we hear, "What do you think we are? The power company???"

Any chance I get, I open the windows and doors to try to get a good breeze thru the house. So I know what you're saying. I agree that I've heard that fans make you FEEL cooler yet it doesn't actualy cool the room. I have also heard that you should flip a switch on the fan to make the fan blades go in reverse, therefore mixing the air and not necessarily blow air onto you.

I'm also in Texas. When we have nice weather, we open all the windows and doors. We only keep the fans on in the rooms that we are in. But in the end, running a fan non-stop is cheaper than running your AC and/or heater intermittently ... so you'll still save money either way (fans on or fans off).

I'm with you. It is soooo much cheaper to maintain a temp. instead of "catching up". We have our windows open too. We live in New Braunfels. At times its a little warm but not too bad. The fans are a lot cheaper than the a/c or heater too. We put a box fan in a few windows to pull in the outside air. You just keep on doing what your doing.

If it adds to your comfort level, it may be worth it, so not a waste.

Love my ceiling fans running them all the time. Even if I'm not in the room. I think it keeps the room cooler/wrmer. I have always kept the ceiling fans on. We keep our house on the warm side in the summer time so the fans really do help.