Air Conditioning Use

Air Conditioning Use

Fan-Tastic

by Dale Y the Green guy

As we are starting to come into the warmer days of spring and summer, a lot of us are beginning to get out and clean the air conditioning units that we have. As we all know on those most hot and humid days, air conditioning is one of the greatest inventions in the history of human-kind. It can be steamy hot outside, yet be beautifully chilly inside. Ya just gotta love air conditioners.

Well, here is a way to make every air conditioner more efficient, and virtually everyone can do it. Put your AC on the lowest settings, and turn on a couple of fans. That’s it!

The reason this works is two fold. First, fans only burn up about 80 watts of power as they run, compared to a couple of thousand watts for air conditioning. Keeping the AC on low limits the wattage used which automatically makes it far more efficient and will save you money.

The second reason is the basics of cooling dynamics. Cool air by itself will cool you off, no doubt, but blowing cool air around will cool you off faster. Even on hot days, a simple fan blowing air makes you feel a bit cooler. Think about how much more comfortable you would feel if the air getting blown around was a little cooler. You’d get goosebumps!

In scientific terms, your skin cools through perspiration, and as such, water droplets on your skin evaporate and take your body heat along for the ride. This is the exact reason that a 40-degree day feels chilly, but a 40-degree day with a wind chill of zero degrees, feels downright frigid! That same principle applies here. The same temperature with a bit of wind behind it makes all the difference in the world.

You will literally be able to turn your AC fan down on low using a regular fan to blow the air around, yet remain just as cool as if it were on high with no fan. Essentially, you are using less energy to achieve the same purpose. And using less energy is always a good thing.

So there you have it. Don’t give up your air conditioning, just give up the practice of blasting it on high all the time. Use a fan to circulate the air in rooms that you will be in. You’ll be just as cool, use less energy, and feel good about it the entire season long.