eli5: If hot air rises and cool air falls, why are we told to have our ceiling fans blow up in the winter and down in the summer? Wouldn’t it make more sense to pull the air in the opposite direction it naturally goes to help it circulate?

Question

eli5: If hot air rises and cool air falls, why are we told to have our ceiling fans blow up in the winter and down in the summer? Wouldn’t it make more sense to pull the air in the opposite direction it naturally goes to help it circulate?

In: 6539

Answer 1

Fans are very good at pushing air, but very bad a pulling air (unless there is some kind of enclosure). Put a balloon one meter in front of a fan and one meter behind it and you’ll see what i mean.

So you turn your fan on blowing up in the winter to push the hot air up there around the rest of the room.

In the summer, you want the fan blowing on you to help with evaporative cooling, aka sweat.