I just installed a ceiling fan at the top of my cathedral stairwell ceiling. The room directly below the stairwell is where my stove is so I get a ton of heat up in the cavity where I installed the fan. I tried using the fan in reverse (clockwise), but I did not seem to get any noticeable results. I am thinking about trying it in the counter clockwise direction. Any thoughts?
Ceiling fan
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Bob E
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The taller the ceiling the more powerful the fan will need to be. A wimpy fan will probably do a good job at stirring the warm air at the top of the room, but it might not be able to push it far enough down to be felt. I've seen some low hanging ceiling fans that dangle to just around second story floor height or so. I suspect this allows them to get good results with a normal (quite) ceiling fan sized motor and blades. Avoiding the need to bolt a turbo prop to the ceiling. Probably not much dangle room in a stairwell though. It's been a while since I read a manual but it seems like the fan manufacturers recommend having the fan pulling air up in the winter. This pushes warm air down the side of the room keeping air from blowing directly on you when you are sitting underneath the fan, reducing the windchill effect. But I would probably try setting it to blow down and turn it on high.
I hung the fan on a two foot rod and that puts it right around the height of the second floor. I put it on high blowing down and it seems to be better then when it was in reverse. I can feel warm air blowing down. We shall see what happens!
ZBrooks
Burning Hunk
I run my fans in the winter on the same setting that I do in the summer; pushing the air down. I've found that this is better at pushing the warm air around throughout my house from the living room where my stove is located. We used to do it this way when I grew up, too, with a wood stove.
ExhibitGuy
New Member
tiger
Feeling the Heat
Cool; that works in my favor. If my ceiling was any lower ceiling fans would have me thinking about the helicopter scene from Dawn of the Dead. I have two Hunter 52" ceiling huggers new-in-box awaiting installation.
My house went up 3 degrees by putting my fan in the reverse mode(downward circulation).
ZBrooks
Burning Hunk
I've tried both directions on the fan and no fan at all. Summer mode definitely works best in my house.
Can't hurt to try. The theory is to get a convection current going, but that the warm air is going to go down the walls in the winter, not directly below the fan, so you shouldn't feel anything. In winter, people don't want the feeling of moving air on their skin as that has a cooling effect.
Having said that, the idea of reversing the fan is to lift the warm air up, but if it's already up there, then maybe the notion of pushing it down isn't so bad. Good luck.
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