Ceiling fans don't lower the temperature of a room, but they do make us feel cooler. That is what the ventilation experts say. A U.S. Department of Energy publication points out that a ceiling fan moves the air in a room, and that when air moves over our skin, we feel comfortable. This government research, in other words, confirms common sense.
Like a lot of folks who suffer through Maryland summers, I welcome any breeze and cheer the work of whirling blades. So recently I looked into the idea of adding a ceiling fan to my life.
Ceiling fans, which cost about 3 cents an hour to run, can save money on the household cooling bill. Working in concert with air conditioning (which costs upward of 50 cents an hour to run), or in lieu of it, a ceiling fan pulls the cold air up from the floor and distributes it throughout a room.
People who have ceiling fans brag about their coolness and efficiency. Al Sprock, who has six ceiling fans in his well-shaded three-bedroom home in Carroll County, told me he had turned his air conditioning on only six days this summer. My younger brother told me the ceiling fans whirling in his three-bedroom home in the Kansas City suburbs enable his family to be comfortable with the air conditioner's thermostat set at 78. The Department of Energy says turning your thermostat two degrees higher could lower your cooling costs by 4 percent to 6 percent.
I consulted with Sprock, who is an electrician, and my brother, who has installed ceiling fans in his home, because working with electricity scares me. If presented with a new ceiling fan (which are sold in stores and online for anywhere from $40 to $800), my initial reaction would be to call an electrician, or my brother, and get them to hook it up.
Jack Sprock, who is one of Al's brothers and runs Complete Electric Service Co., says the business gets about 10 requests each summer to install ceiling fans. That job usually costs from $125 to $200, he said. Rob, the youngest Sprock brother, ends up doing most of them.
I met all of the Sprock brothers and their fellow worker, Gary Fox, this week when they showed me how to install a ceiling fan. The fan went in the ceiling above a bed in Al's home. This was a "honey-do" task that Al had promised his wife, Sandy, he would complete, someday. So the Sprock brothers and Fox pitched in.
