Sometimes I wonder how I have existed on this planet for [REDACTED] years without knowing something so upsettingly obvious. For instance, it took me an embarrassingly long time to learn that “smdh” does not mean “so much damn hate”. Today I found out that ceiling fans have a secondary setting for winter, and my tiny lizard brain is blown.
Radio guy turned podcaster Angus O’Loughlin posted a video on Monday with his biggest fan (the one on the ceiling) pointing out the little switch above the blades of the fan.
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Excusez-moi? You can use a ceiling fan in the winter months too?? This knowledge has floored me — what do you mean a fan in the chilly time works just as well as in the big hot?
Turns out you very much can, and it’s all in the direction the fan blades spin.
In summer, cooling the room is what we want to achieve so we’re not sweating like a glassblower’s ass all the time. Having your ceiling fan spinning counter-clockwise, cooler air is pushed down towards the floor to where our swampy asses are trying to not melt. It helps to create a wind-chill effect, and in turn, we feel a bit cooler without the room temperature really changing that much.
In winter, you want the opposite effect, right? So by flicking the little switch on your ceiling fan and making the blades spin clockwise, the fan moves the air around the other way. By using it on a slower setting, it sucks all the cooler air up from the lower half of the room and moves the warmer air (which usually hangs out at a higher level because hot air rises) back down towards the floor.
I can’t help but feel like I had this information stored in a dark recess of my brain somewhere, just waiting to be recovered.
Apparently keeping the air moving around in the house helps to stop dehydration, improve airflow and circulation, and lower the humidity and condensation.
What the fuck this has truly stopped me in my tracks today, and I hope you’ve learned something too. 2022: the year of learning.
