Expert: Dr. Jesse LaPrade - 5/31/2004

Question
Not sure this is your area but:
When a room is unoccupied is it better to turn off ceiling fan(s) or leave on?  Thanks for help.

Answer
 Marian:

You have an interesting question. The answer depends on several things:

If the air that the ceiling fan generates circulates to other rooms in your home, it could be advantagous to leave it on. My home has a ceiling fan in the family room and the ceiling is 21 feet high. We have a split air conditioning system, one upstairs and one downstairs. The ceiling fan in the family room helps to circulate the upstairs air down to the first floor. We seldom close our bedroom doors and the ceiling fans upstairs and the one in the family room help the A.C. air to circulate throughout the house.

If you have rooms that are closed off and no one is in that room I can't see much advantage to running that fan. We also have some floor fans that we use to add to the cooling efect but we turn those off at night or when we are not in those rooms.

I do not claim to be a fan scientist, but maybe my ideas will help you determine when to run your ceiling fans to get the best advantage. I do enjoy our ceiling fans and we think that they save us on our power bill. We run our central air conditioner at 75 degrees farenheit in the hot months and at 65 in the winter. I really prefer the winter, but I can do very well at 75 if we also use our celing fans.

Thank you for your thought provoking question.