Thermostat VS Ceiling fan

beenthere

After you insulate teh floors.

How will you know if the ceiling fans are helping to save anything.
The insulation alone, can reduce your heating bill by over 3%.
In some applications, insulating the floor can save far more yet.


Ps: Were aware, that the fan is 70", not teh bldes them selves.
I just still call them 70 blades. Since the total of the blades and housing make the demension.

Winchester

If you're going to use the ceiling fans during the winter, you'll definitely want to keep the speed on low. Otherwise you'll involve a windchill effect.

Winchester

That is to include all taxes associated with my NG as well. But amazingly enough, I only used 9 therms of NG last month at a price near $30! And when I look at how many therms that were used last January.....something's got to change. Even then I was very conservative. Gulp!

beenthere

They probably have a min monthly fee.

TheOak

Last month I was billed for 14 therms and after all of the billing factors and fees, I was just under $18. $30 for 9 therms is crazy.

Anyway ...

There was a poster in the first page I believe that mentioned they install Honeywell 8000 thermostats. I have just ordered one.

My current thermostat is fine enough, it is just not programmable. I would like one where I could program it to drop the temp and night and then bring it back up during the day. Right now I do it manually ... sometimes I forget ... so it would be nice to have something that remembers

Anyway, one feature that attracted me to this thermostat is the fact that it has a "fan circulation" mode. What this does is it runs the fan about 35% or 20 minutes every hour. The purpose being:

1. If you have a fancy air filter, it can filter your air keeping your air cleaner.
2. It will circulate the air around in your home, keeping your home a more even temperature.

It is the second point that attracted me.

I have a two floor home with thermostat on the second floor. The end result is that the upstairs is just right, but the downstairs is always a little cooler.

Right now, the problem we are having is that I have the thermostat set for 70, but during the day, due to the sun, the upstairs will heat to 74 or so, so the heat does not turn on. Because the heat does not turn on, the downstairs gets cold.

I am hoping that this fan circulation mode will move some of that warm around resulting in the whole home being more equal in temperature without using a therm of gas.

The same theory should work in the summer where it would bring the cooler air up, thus hopefully not kicking on the A/C unit as much.

The thermostat online is around $100, so I have bit the bullet and ordered one. At a bare minimum, because it is programmable it should do what I want it to do. Hopefully the fan circulation will be the icing on the cake.

I only bring this up just to give you another idea ...

Edit:

My first post ... so be nice

beenthere

Is your duct work in the attic(unconditioned attic).

If so, then fan circ is not a feature you want to use.

It will cool the house down quicker in the winter, and heat it up faster in the summer.

TheOak

Ahh ... good point ... did not think of thank.

The duct work is in my second floor. So, downstairs, my vents are in the ceiling, upstairs the vents are in the floor.

I have one return downstairs and one upstairs, both in the ceiling. Therefore, for the upstairs return it will be in the attic. I am not sure if the return comes right back down into the condition home and back though my second floor. I was up there about 6 months ago though an I am 80% sure that is all it does. There is going to be some exposure to unconditioned space when it gets to my furnace in my unconditioned garage. I'll need to take a look ...

So the big question then is my return. Getting into the house it obviously is going though conditioned space. Best case is that it all runs through my second floor and the only exposure I have is in my garage.

Thanks for the tip ...

emeyer

Standard thermostats have an anticipator built in
This is normal adjusted by the heating contractor
Determined by the current draw of the thermostat circuit for that furnace
It acts like a mini heating element inside the stat
What it basically does is a sensitivity adjustment
If set to low it will cause the stat to turn on/off to quick and of course set to high will cause an over/under shoot of temperature.

hope that helps some

hvaclover

Old tech Emeyer. Even the non programmable digital stats now use cycles per hour rather than matching gas valve amp draw.

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