Ceiling Fan...which direction?

[BS-N]

I have been told, and it seems reasonable, to set the ceiling fan so it draws upward in winter when operating a stove if you want to circulate the air better. It seems to me that by doing this the hot air along the ceiling would be forced to move outward and down while being replaced with cooler air from below.

I know air circulates better with both directions, but which do most of you think is more desireable?

Thanks

Brian

 

[Willhound]

This agrees with what I've always heard.

 

[Metal]

Either way will move the air, but when the fan is set to pull the air up you will feel less draft when in the room, making it feel warmer. In the Summer, you will want the fan to push air down, so you can feel air movement.

 

[Jfigliuolo]

Not so sure I agree with you fella's... Think of it this way...

You stove is most likely near a wall. Natural convection will force the air up from you stove along the wall to the ceiling. The Fan will do one of two things...
1. Force the nice hot air down, then along the floor, over the stove, up the wall, back to the fan.

OR

2. Force the air AGAINST the natural convection, trying to move the air DOWN the wall.

Given these two choices I'll take A. More air movement = more consistant Temp and better heat dispertion

 

[begreen]

Metal has it right. As soon as the fan is running, it will take over circulation. Air blowing across skin has a cooling effect and even if it's warm air, it can feel cool.

 

[Roospike]

We heat our whole 2 floor 1800 sq ft house with the wood stove and have 2 ceiling fans in the wood stove room ( front room ) . The whole house heats much better when the fans pull the heat up and off the ceiling and down the walls . We have run them the other way and it does move air and mixes it up to take out the warm spots but does not heat the house very well when the fans are blowing down .

 

[Verynycegirl]

Would you run a ceiling fan on a low or high speed to make the warm air circulate best? I have two ceiling fans on in my livingroom (which has cathedral ceilings) and one upstairs on the landing. Is it best to run both? One? Or none??

Tracy

 

[wg_bent]

I just reversed mine so that it pushes the air up. It's kinda warm here (NY), around 35, and I started the stove about an hour ago. Temp here in the kitchen is around 75, which is clear across the house from the stove. :cheese:

A guy at work is bummed because he's keeping his upstairs at 60 already and his gas bill S**ks. "Bummer" I said.

 

[Roospike]

Would you run a ceiling fan on a low or high speed to make the warm air circulate best? I have two ceiling fans on in my livingroom (which has cathedral ceilings) and one upstairs on the landing. Is it best to run both? One? Or none??

Tracy

"For me" ...... less is more. We have two fans in the stove room. and we use the fan above the stove on low and turn the other one off when we need the extra heat up stairs. During the day we have both fan on. ( low )

 

[Verynycegirl]

ODepends.....what room(s) are you talking about?? The room with the stove?? A bedroom??

Hi Dylan,
One fan is in the livingroom which is the same room my woodstove is in (it was cathedral ceiling....not sure if that matters) the other ceiling fan is on the 2nd floor in on the landing.

 

[Roospike]

ODepends.....what room(s) are you talking about?? The room with the stove?? A bedroom??

Hi Dylan,
One fan is in the livingroom which is the same room my woodstove is in (it was cathedral ceiling....not sure if that matters) the other ceiling fan is on the 2nd floor in on the landing.

I would think that with a cathedral ceiling you would run the fan to run the ait down and not off the walls . Maybe a med setting .

 

[Mo Heat]

I have a stove downstairs with NO ceiling fans. Up the 5 foot wide staircase is a big room with a cathedral ceiling and a ceiling fan. Heat naturally goes up there via the stairs. Quite a bit of heat. If I blow the ceiling fan downward, and I'm sitting on the couch, I won't be for long. If I blow the fan upwards on low, it doesn't have enough velocity to get air moving down the walls as much as I like, so I turn it on medium. I put a bunch of incense in there one day and experimented to see which speed was just enough to get air moving all the way to the bottom of the walls. Medium did it.

If I had a ceiling fan upstairs and it was hot up there and the fan was positioned to spuport it, I'd probably experiment with trying to blow some heat back down if it was cold downstairs. It probably wouldn't work very well. If it was warm downstairs I'd probably try blowing the fan upwards to see if it made the room more or less comfortable. Then downwards. Location of the fan, the heat, and the people, probably has a lot to do with how you settle on settings and such.

 

[Fast4wood]

down is my choice, all that hot air up at the ceiling needs to be moved to the floor.

 

[ansehnlich1]

We have 2 ceiling fans, so I put one UP and one DOWN. The one nearest the stove is set to blow UP, the one away from the stove is set to blow DOWN, and I set 'em on low. Sometimes I'll crank 'em on high just to blow a lot of air around, but it really hasn't proven to make a big difference in heating.

 

[shawneyboy]

When you want to move the warm air down you turn fan on blowing up..... This may seem counter intuitive but... that is why they have that setting, and science has proven that this is the way to use a ceiling fan in the winter. In the summer you have it blow down, as was said earlier, the air moving across your skin has a cooling effect. If you have it blowing down with warm air it will have that cooling effect as well, and it will feel not as warm.

 

[Shari]

A thread from 2005?

At least the info is still right (blow air up w/ceiling fan).

Shari

 

[tfdchief]

In our 1500 conventional floor plan ranch house, with the living room at the end the hall and the bedrooms at the other end, if we turn on the ceiling fan in the living room (either direction) it completely disrupts the natural convection currents. Leave it off and the cold air returns down the hall at floor level to the insert room, and the heat travels away from the stove at ceiling level...keeping the rest of the house warm. It even goes around the corner to the kitchen and back. When we turn the ceiling fan on it seems to keep the heat all in the living room. Guess it depends on the layout and situation. I have tried it both ways and leaving it off works the best. If it gets real cold I can set a floor fan on the floor of the hall pointing at the living room to help the cold air back to the source of heat....that helps as well.