Ceiling Fan with Vaulted Ceiling

Nominally think in terms of circulation doughnut between the center of the room and the walls, so I usually leave it run with the airflow upward in center of the room. Less perceptible.

If you want to run the room warmer you can reverse it so you get some evaporative effect off your skin.

It depends mainly on where your furniture is located. If the furniture is along the walls then having the fan run in 'reverse' where it lifts the air upward means than it will create a downward flow along the walls and over the furniture, which you might want in the summer but not in the winter. On the other hand, if the ceiling fan is over your bed then maybe you do want to run it in 'reverse' in the winter time to avoid having a cold breeze on the bed. (Or not run it at all in the winter.)

Tomayto tomahto is what I suspect, but simply try out both directions and see which seems better.

So it has nothing to do with the Coriolis Effect, then? How strange.

You seem to be forgetting that fan blades for the Southern Hemisphere are built to the opposite hand. This gains about 0.001% in fan efficiency, which a clever designer would surely not overlook.

are you really serious? which direction does the toilet water spin at your house?

come on tornado, i'm starting to lose respect.

I would assign more value the blades being right-hand or left-hand pitch than I would assign to the water in someone's toilet bowl. This more or less defined factor will determine suck or blow on blade rotation... as has been said, I doubt it makes enough difference to to be of any significance in this case.

Vaulted ceilings seem nice, but they just amount to wasted space that collects heat in the summer and winter.

I would run the fan on low or medium in the winter, (either direction), to move the heated air back down into the room where you can feel it. I wouldn't run it at all in the summer, since there's no reason to cool an area that you won't be occupying.

I intentionally looked for a house with 8' ceilings throughout. They may be passe, but heating and cooling is far more efficient.

I went to look at a new build house recently - all ceilings lower than 8' - one floor had 7'4" ceilings.

Was this in the Shire, perchance?

Ceiling fans should only be used when the room is occupied, in the summer,they should blow air down, creating evaporative cooling on the skin of the occupants.

During the winter they should move room air upwards to the ceiling,then down the walls to the floor,this moves the warmer air that rises ,back into the air that is occupied by people,increasing their comfort.

Running ceiling fans is solely to improve comfort of the occupants, at a higher set point in summer ,and a lower one in the winter.

The one thing you need to be careful of is if the blades are just above your head. This matters more in the bedroom. A friend of mine playing a joke (I think) jumped into the blades, knocked himself out, but before he did this, he tied his wife to the bed. Made for an extremely uncomfortable situation when the neighbor had to break in to their house and take care of the situation. We live in the sticks and not close to my friend who has since moved on. Watch the height of the blades and do not jump up for any reason near a ceiling fan.

"to my friend who has since moved on"

Must have been some ceiling fan!

Another thing to watch is that the fan has good clearance to the ceiling - say one blade length or more. But clearance above head is more important, of course.

If roof / ceiling does not have good insulation, a floor fan may be better in summer than a ceiling fan - leave the heat up there.

Most effective & most cost effective roof / ceiling insulation for tropics is the reflective stuff - up to 97% effective. Usually feels like free air conditioning, no running costs.

Good point, Stuart! This is why old homes had 12' ceilings. Before air conditioning, the idea was to allow the hot air to rise above the heads of the occupants. It makes no sense to pull the hot air down in the summertime. The cooling effect of a fan is created through evaporation due to the movement of air over the perspiring skin. I wonder, though, if even a floor fan would create currents causing the hot air above to be drawn into the circulation of air in the room. Any thoughts?

Specifier asked "I wonder, though, if even a floor fan would create currents causing the hot air above to be drawn into the circulation of air in the room. Any thoughts?"

To a certain extent yes, but still considerably less than with a ceiling fan.

Something else re the winter / summer thing is that a turbulent breeze (i.e. direct impingement - blowing 'down') has a greater cooling effect than a steady breeze (blowing 'up', with cooling by donut effect)

I was thinking, with a relatively low ceiling and therefore a relatively high mounted fan, it might be better to have the fan blades set to vertical, so that they push the air sideways out to the edges of the room, instead of pushing it up at the near ceiling, stopping the warm air gathering up near the ceiling in winter.

Some years ago, while working on the ceiling in my bathroom, I was horrified at just how much warm air was gathered in the last top foot of air, it was almost too hot to be comfortable......it spurred me onto only use LED and CFLs in my house......

I have a one and a half story vaulted ceiling over my living room and dinning room areas.

Four years ago I installed a "Big Ass Fan" up top.

No seriously....................it's a "Big Ass Fan" manufactured by "Big Ass Fans"

My Big Ass Fan is similar to this one:

I run it blowing up at its lowest speed during the winter. I have found that the warm air blowing down the walls makes the area feel warmer during the winter.

During the summer I run it blowing down at the lowest speed. The upstairs loft/bedroom share this space, this being why I blow the hot air down. It does actually keep the loft area cooler during the summer.

I have tried running my Big Ass Fan at high speed but the air flow tends to blow things about the room that weigh less than 2 pounds.

I love my Big Ass Fan!

Its really the top of a Helicopter......upside down of course.....

I'm surprised no one quoted any energy savings figures...

This is the info I send customers who ask the same question.

In the southern part of the US, many of those old houses with the 12' ceilings also had tall windows that opened at the bottom and the top. The middle part of the window was fixed. The top, opening, part of the window was so high that they had to be operated with some kind of hook or pole to unlock and open them. The bottom opening portion of the window was closer to the floor than is normal today. With both top and bottom windows open the stratification of the air in the room promoted a circulation of the air. Of course, they were open in the summer to let the heat out. The windows were closed top and bottom in the winter but the tall ceilings made heating the rooms very difficult.

I think that ceiling fans were invented to take advantage of the stratification of the air in these tall rooms. In the winter the fan could pull the hotter air straight down from the ceiling to the people in the room, avoiding the colder air next to the cold walls. In the summer the fan would bring the cooler room air up to displace the hotter air close to the ceiling and hopefully push the hot air toward the open top windows and out of the room. At the same time it would help draw cooler air in the bottom open windows.

I'm not sure that they make as much sense in 8' ceilings, where my head reaches into the top 2' of air. I still have them installed in my house, because the ceiling is a convenient place to mount a fan that you use a lot of the time.

Any air blowing directly on you, even from a ceiling fan mounted to a vaulted ceiling with hot air, is going to feel cooler than the actual ambient temperature as it mixes with the cooler air before it reaches your skin. Then cooling you down.

It is best to create a gentle breeze up towards the ceiling and then down the wall to mix with the cooler walls and windows making the area feel warmer, as the warmer air will be attracted to the cooler air as is passes down the wall back to the center of the room.

This will result in blending with the warmer supply air and then begining its convection cycle once again in the room.

In addition to replies #1 and #11

Air blowing down in the summer, up in the the winter. Maybe down in the winter for a very high fan,in a two story open structure,for a typical vaulted ceiling, blowing up in the winter.

I think that if the fan is close to the ceiling, it will be more efficient moving air downward. The movement of air behind a fan is not the reverse of the air movement in front. Put your hand behind a fan and you feel a little breeze, but nowhere as much as in front. The fan is fed from air in all directions from the rear. From an efficiency standpoint, the ceiling obstructs the air flow much more if the fan is blowing upward.