Choose the Right Fan to Keep Your Home Cool

Even houses that used to stay comfortable most of the year are probably suffering more on hot summer days so now the homeowners may be looking to get a fan to bring the temperature down.

Just about everyone agrees that climate change is happening. This does not so much mean global warming as more frequent severe weather, with hotter summers, colder winters and more frequent floods and droughts than used to be the normal conditions.

It used to be that when the dog days of summer arrived, we could simply use the screen windows and a portable, oscillating fan on a stand to move the air around, but over the last few summers, more heavy artillery was needed to keep the old homestead cool. Two different kinds of fans did the trick.

Firstly, we opted for ceiling fans in the living room and bedroom. It is a fact of science that warm air rises, and it rises up to the ceiling, so that is the best place to have a fan mounted if you want to blow that hot air away.

There is a wide variety of designer styles of ceiling fans available to suit your decor, and the number and size of the blades are variable depending on how big your room is and how much hot air needs to be moved around. The less expensive ones have pull chain switches and two or three speeds, while the more elaborate ceiling fans have variable speeds you can raise or lower from a wall switch.

The second fan we decided to install was an attic fan to pull the hot air out of the attic. You can get ones that require hooking up to the household wiring but a solar powered attic fan gets its energy from the sun, is simpler and less expensive to install and does not use up any of your electricity. Although they cost more initially, their lower installation costs and essentially free usage after makes them well worth considering. Of course, they only work on sunny days, but those are the times when it is most necessary to have your attic fan on and working to cool down your home.