I bought a cheap ceiling fan from Home Depot about 5 years ago and installed it in my bedroom, and when I ran it at low speed, it makes a lot of noise -- the motor had begun to fail, and was straining because it was cheap, dust got in and the bearings have worn out. Time for a replacement.
As with all products like this, finding a replacement can be a daunting experience.
How To Find A Good Ceiling Fan
I did some research on ceiling fans, read ceiling fan reviews, and Googled myself silly and found a that not all ceiling fans are alike:
- Those with sealed bearings will last a lot longer.
- I found out how to pick the right size for our room.
- I found that there a are a lot of ghastly looking ceiling fans out there.
- And I found that the brands I was familiar with may not be the best choices.
One other thing I found: amongst fans that are ENERGY STAR approved (meaning just the most energy efficient ceiling fans), the most efficient models are more than 5 times more efficient than the typical ones. The one I selected uses only 24 Watts, compared to 70 for most of the alternatives (and 87 Watts for the one I am replacing), and that's at high-speed. And get this, the model I replaced my cheapo one with uses 1.7 Watts on its lowest speed (which is often enough), compared to 58 Watts on low speed for the one we replaced. Wow!
But more important, even the less efficient ceiling fans use at least ten times less electricity than an air conditioner sized to cool a single room.
Ceiling Fans Are an Alternative To Air Conditioning (For Everyone)
We use our ceiling fan to replace window air conditioning, which for the last two years, we have done for the entire summer. Those of you from warmer climates than Boston might laugh and say "easy for you to live without AC" but if you were here last summer, there was a stretch that was as bad as Houston in September; hot, humid, oppressive. So ceiling fans are not an AC replacement for many people ... but they are an alternative for everyone for some parts of the year, at least for a bedroom.
We have been using ceiling fans for quite a while. What surprised us when we installed our first ceiling fan was that we preferred it (on almost all nights) to our window AC. A ceiling fan is nearly silent, for one (unless you get a cheap one from Home Depot that breaks in five years :-). And having a gentle breeze is very pleasant -- it is very different from a floor or table fan because it's not directional, and it's steady and gentle. We find that it's hard to get the room just the right temperature with our AC and the fan on the unit, while directional, was still more like a blower of cold, dry air. The ceiling fan is lovely.
When we did use the AC, we used it together with the ceiling fan, and we found we needed much less AC to be comfortable -- to be sure, AC does something no ceiling fan will do, which is remove humidity, but with a little air circulation. And ceiling fans also work in heating season to help get the heat distributed around the room.
Ceiling Fans Cost A Lot Less than Air Conditioning
Want to save money? A good ceiling fan costs a lot less than even a cheap air conditioner. And as I learned, cheap things that don't last are typically more expensive -- and "energy intensive", since they require materials, manufacturing, shipping, and then, they take up space in a landfill after they break. So forgetting that you'll save money on the initial purchase, and may also be able to use the fan to make your room more comfortable in heating season, you save money getting a fan. And on aspirin: window air conditioners are heavy!
But when it comes to running costs, my new ceiling fan costs a heck of a lot less to run compared to my window air conditioner (efficient, Energy Star approved, in PowerSaver mode). My AC uses an average of 1000W during a typical summer night (more when it's cooling, less when it's just fanning, but about 1000W overall) -- my new fan uses 24W on high-speed. If we run the fan or AC for 8 hours at night for 4 months a year that's 960 hours. For the AC, 1000W = 1kW, so we'll use 960 kWh. For the fan, we'll use 24W (0.024kW), so we'll use 23kWh. At our rate of $0.173/kWh, we'll spend:
- $167 for AC, or
- $4 for the ceiling fan.
The Clincher
And ceiling fans are kind of romantic, too.
Comments
Or- even better- use a Vornado! It works as well as a ceiling fan- plus it can follow you into whatever room you may be in!
Posted by Bri on Apr 29, 2010 3:58pmGo ahead -- tell us which one you picked!
Posted by Joel on May 1, 2010 11:32pmJoel -- good point on forgetting to mention which ceiling fan, explicitly :-).
I picked the one in the picture (Amazon link) inside the story, the Monte Carlo Avanti 52" White (5AV52WH). We don't currently sell ceiling fans in our store, but this link will send you to the one I got.
And Bri, I think the Vornado air circulator (we sell one in our store), is also a great product, but it's a very different "cooling experience" than a ceiling fan. The large blades of a ceiling fan rotate much more slowly, and of course directly overhead. In our case we have one in our bedroom over our bed, and another in the kitchen. A portable fan like the Vornado is great, but even with the neat rotating bezel of the Vornado, the flow of air is not as gentle as a ceiling fan, and while the Vornado is very quiet, ceiling fans (good ones, at least) as nearly silent. Each has their purpose, and each beats an air conditioner on efficiency and energy use.
Tom
Posted by Tom Harrison on May 2, 2010 10:22amHi Tom.
Posted by Michael Stefanakos on May 3, 2010 4:02pmGreat post.
We are huge fans of ceiling fans. :-)
The other fan I'd really like to find is a powerful and quiet fan I can put into a window that will act as a "whole house fan." Or maybe even two fans — one blowing in and one blowing out.
Even on the hottest summer days, as it is with most locations, the evening air is often quite cool. The inside of the house is frequently hotter than it is outside. What may solve this problem is a fan that could displace the hot inside air with cool outside air. Now that would be a real replacement for AC!
I have looked and looked, but nothing seems to fit the bill.
Let me know if you have any thoughts on this hot topic.
All the best.
M-
Michael --
Thanks for your comment. I am not aware of any products that are "sideways whole house fans" (mounting in a window). I don't see any reason why this wouldn't work, although typically whole house fans are far more powerful than the box fans you install in windows. One other advantage of whole-house fans is that in addition to bringing up air from downstairs, they clear hot air out of the attic.
We have one window mounted fan that has two smaller blades -- they have louvers that allow you to adjust the direction of the airflow, and the fans are separately reversable, so hypothetically, you could suck in cold air on one side, create a circular flow of air through the room, and blow hot air out the other side. But ... it's noisy, cheap, and doesn't work very well :-(
We have a whole-house fan that works the normal way (sucking air up through the house from downstairs) and use it a great deal. We got a cheap one from Home Depot (are you seeing a theme?) and it's ... cheap: noisy, not very energy efficient, and required a rather large hole in our upstairs hallway. I also jury-rigged an insulating and air-sealed box that I put over it every winter. Had I known about the Tamarack whole house fans we sell in our online store, I certainly would have gotten one of them (even if I were cheap!) -- reviews are great.
Tom
Posted by Tom Harrison on May 3, 2010 5:29pmA quality ceiling fan can make all the difference in the world. As well as they don't make the noise that a cheap fan does.
Posted by Ryan on May 6, 2010 11:19am