Ceiling fan

[3fingersalute]

I have a pellet stove installed in my living room, my question is, should the ceiling fan be run to help distribute heat, or is the air from the ceiling fan going to actually "cool down" some of the heat? The fan can be run in 3 speeds, as well as either forward or reversed.

Any thoughts/ideas/opinions would be greatly appreciated!

 

[Metal]

Run the fan so it pulls the air up. This way the air will be pulled up to the ceiling and then come down the walls creating less feeling of "draft" to occupants. It will make overall room temperature more even.

 

[fbelec]

how high is the fan from the floor?
try running it and see how it does.
run it on low or it might feel like it's a bit drafty
if it is only 8 or 10 feet from the floor most times in my experience it would feel drafty, but if your stove is running real hot it might feel nice like a warm summer breeze.
this is a question that pops up from time to time here so let us know how it works out.

 

[Homefire]

I have a pellet stove installed in my living room, my question is, should the ceiling fan be run to help distribute heat, or is the air from the ceiling fan going to actually "cool down" some of the heat? The fan can be run in 3 speeds, as well as either forward or reversed.

Any thoughts/ideas/opinions would be greatly appreciated!

I run mine on low in reverse. Been doing this for years now and if I forget to run it
the difference in the rest of my home is very noticeably cooler.

The key is to run your fans on low so as to reduce their coiling effect
on your skin.

 

[Corey]

Specifics about your house and setup would be helpful. I have a 70's "rambling ranch" with 8' ceilings throughout. I leave my ceiling fans off because it lets the warm air flow along the ceilings to the rest of the house. If I run the fans, the air gets mixed up in one room and it is hard to get heat to the rest of the house. Plus it always feels 5 degrees cooler with the fan air blowing on me.

If you have high vaulted ceilings, a fan might be good to help bring heat down into the room.

Corey

 

[laynes69]

We have 10 foot ceilings in our whole home and we have ceiling fans in every one. Upstairs when I redid the ductwork, I had to route the ductork into the attic and place the supplys in the ceiling and have the returns on the far corner on the bottom of the wall. When we go to bed at night, our ceiling fans run on low. This helps keep the heat down to the middle of the room. For us the ceiling fans make a world of difference on heating and cooling.

 

[3fingersalute]

Specifics about your house and setup would be helpful.

My house is a pretty old house. The pellet stove is installed in the living room, and that is the only room that has a ceiling fan. The ceiling is a little under 8' high. When I run the ceiling fan in reverse, it seems to be a little cooler in the living room, but I'm not sure as I usually end up turning it off before I really see if it distributes the heat better to any other rooms in the house. I guess I really need to give it a try for a few hours or better to see for sure what difference it makes.

The stove itself is really heating the house nicely, the bedroom directly above the stove seems to be the one that gets cold, but that seems to be because the heat is traveling up the steps and directly into another bedroom that is a straight shot from the stairwell. I'm going to try using a small fan on low to direct some of the heat over towards the other bedroom to see if that helps??

Thanks for the replies, I'll let you know what I find out (if anything).

 

[fbelec]

you could also try closing the door a little more than half way to the bedroom that gets all the heat and the heat might make it's way to the other bedroom

 

[BigV]

So,...
Is it best to run the ceiling fan in reverse, or forward? With 14' vaulted ceilings in my 24' X 26' family room, I run the fan in forward and on low speed. When lying on the floor, it feels somewhat cooler and warmer the higher you get in the room. Would running the fan in reverse make a difference??

 

[begreen]

Yes, in the winter run the fan in reverse.

 

[3nickles]

Yes, in the winter run the fan in reverse.

OK. I'm confused I have a two story family room and just had a Country Pellet insert installed today. Ran the ceiling fan on both forward and reverse at different speeds and I can't determine which is best. Forward or reverse?

 

[fbelec]

thinking about it i would say have the breeze come down on you under the fan (blowing down) and not the walls (blowing up) because if you think about how the air flows around your stove or after it comes out of the blower it goes from cool air being pulled up from the floor to the stove, heated, and then it rises to the ceiling. if your fan is blowing up so the air is coming down the wall then the heat is trying to rise while the fan is blowing down on it it won't make a good circulation. unless your stove is located in the center or close to the center of the room.

the fan is only circulating the air in the room. look at your fans owner manual and it should have a picture of how it circulates. a tall ceiling like a 14 foot turn the fan on low to bring down the heat.

while your stove is running stand on a ladder up as close to the ceiling as you can it won't take two long before you break out in a sweat.

with a tall ceiling like a 14 foot it might work to help heat the house quicker because all the heat from the stove is rising and has to heat the upper part of the room before it gets lower enough to spill out thru a doorway

just my $.02

 

[Metal]

The reason for running ceiling fans in reverse during the cold months is to reduce draft. A small amount of air movement makes a person "feel" much colder, so by making the air flow down the walls you affect an area of the room where people usually don't congregate much.

From Energystar.gov:

Using the Ceiling Fan Year Round. In the summer, use the ceiling fan in the counter-clockwise direction. The airflow produced by the ceiling fan creates a wind-chill effect, making you "feel" cooler. In the winter, reverse the motor and operate the ceiling fan at low speed in the clockwise direction. This produces a gentle updraft, which forces warm air near the ceiling down into the occupied space. Remember to adjust your thermostat when using your ceiling fan - additional energy and dollar savings could be realized with this simple step!

 

[PAJerry]

We have found that running the ceiling fan in the room with the insert in the 'summer' position and running it in reverse in the kitchen moves the heat very evenly though the house. Our ceilings are 8 1/2 ft. Maybe with a higher ceiling the opposite would be true. Both fans are kept on low and the draft is hardly noticeable.

 

[3fingersalute]

I ran mine on low speed reversed overnight last night, and the living room was a little cooler this morning than what it normally is with the stove burning, but I believe the rooms above were a little warmer.

That could be coincidence however, since I closed the one bedroom door almost completely (left it open about 3") to try and force some of the air into the other bedroom.

 

[fbelec]

I ran mine on low speed reversed overnight last night, and the living room was a little cooler this morning than what it normally is with the stove burning, but I believe the rooms above were a little warmer.

That could be coincidence however, since I closed the one bedroom door almost completely (left it open about 3") to try and force some of the air into the other bedroom.

thats called fine tuning

 

[Hogwildz]

I have a roughly 30 floor cathedral ceiling above my living room. I run it blowing down and the air is warm when insert is fired up. But if fire is out, it is cool.
My need is to bring the warm air back down from the ceiling while insert is burning. The loft & 2 bedrooms upstairs get plenty of heat from the natural rise.

 

[Gooserider]

Our primary stove is in the living room of our contemporary style house. It is sort of a ski-chalet or A-frame style with a HIGH cathedral ceiling (peak height 23.5 feet, wall height about 14' - I had to rent a scaffolding tower a couple years back to replace the ceiling fan when it died...) We have a 52" diameter 7-speed ceiling fan in the center of the room on a 5' downrod. - It is a Cassablanca brand chosen because it was the only fan that didn't have a periodic lubrication requirement (Lifetime warranty, w/o lube) and that could be reversed from the wall switch. There is no easy way to reach the fan so we needed one we didn't NEED to reach! :D

Without the fan the upstairs gets unbearably hot, while the downstairs stays cold. With the fan on "down" it either makes no difference, or the breeze is enough to make one feel chilly anyways. With the fan on "up" we can run it around medium speed and it keeps the living room at a nice even temperature without giving any noticeable drafts. The ground floor bedrooms / offices are still a bit chilly but I am in the process of getting a Thermgard fan controller to try running the HVAC fan part time to even the rest of the heat out.

Gooserider

 

[nshif]

for some reason I see Elk about to post. LOL

 

[cogger]

Any thoughts/ideas/opinions would be greatly appreciated!

I wonder if a cat would help: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bq_mUswLtCw

 

[hardwood715]

I have a roughly 30 floor cathedral ceiling above my living room

Woah, you gotta take the elevator to adjust it? ONLY KIDDING bout typo! It must be nice to be able to stand up straight in there under the fan, my cielings on the first floor I guess would be 7 foot, so anyone walking under my ceiling fan thats tall, I always have to say look out for that fan!

 

[Gooserider]

Some cathedrals are that high, and while they look great, they can be a real bear...

When our ceiling fan died (can't complain it was a brand X asian import, presumably put in when the house was built, so it lasted better than 25 years) I had to rent and build an 18' tall scaffolding tower in order to get up there and change it. Since we wanted to be able to reverse it from the ground (one of the problems with the old fan was that we couldn't) we ended up having to buy a $250 Casablanca fan instead of a $50 unit from Home Despot.

Fortunately there were no lights on the old fan, and we deliberately didn't get any on the new fan since there is no way to get up to change them. There are 4 recessed cans with flood bulbs up there though. To reach them takes a bulb changing suction cup on a 12' extension pole, with a 4' painters extension screwed on to it, with me on my tip-toes. If something goes wrong with the fixture (has happenned) I have to put up the extension ladder. The top end has to lean on a ~8" beam, if the bottom end moves at all, the top will drop off the bottom of the beam and everything takes a long drop. Can't use a harness as nothing to hook it to.

We also have an amazing collection of spider webs up there - no way to vacuum or dust w/o major plumbing efforts... The chimney is impressive though, we refer to it as the "brick rocket" cause that's what it looks like. The house is beautiful but not at all practical and is a bear to work on or take care of. (The GF bought it before I met her, so don't blame me!)

Gooserider