Air con vs ceiling fan

[ThaiSanookGuy]

Aircon, but anyway it's better to use both at the same time.

[mercman24]

i would think about comfort more than money saving, i went into a bar in MAY (very hot day) it was stifling in there, the fans were just blowing the hot air around the room, it felt very oppressive, so didn't stay long in there, it was terrible. so air con every time,

[dotpoom]

Not so sure

If you consider that there is a comfort element in all of this that should be considered in the assessment and it could be that the AC is the better option.

Once the temp has been reached by the AC then it doesn't take much Electric to maintain that setting especially if it is 25C (proved to be the most economic setting by pure volume if not statistically proved)

After the set temp has been reached by the AC then the AC room fan is the most comfortable (for me at least) the room ceiling fan leads me to dry mouth syndrome and is much louder then the AC fan and less direct in your face type of thing.

I would have thought that most people find it the other way around. The A/C leaves their mouth/throat dry. As mentioned earlier, the ceiling fan is simply moving the air about.

[Suradit69]

I have Daikin inverter aircons in the bedrooms, which are used every night and set at 26°.

During the months December 2013 and January-February 2014, it the temperature at night would here go to 14°, hence for 3 months I didn't use any aircon but had the ceiling fan at the lowest speed instead.

During those 3 months there was little to no difference in my average electricity bill.

I use ceiling fans (and free breeze off the Gulf of Thailand) 95% of the time. Any month I do use the A/C even for a few days my electric bill is noticeably higher. There might be some greater efficiency if the A/C was on continually, but there's no way my bill would be the same as when I only use the ceiling fans.

[bangon04]

Any A/C is actually dehumidifying the indoor air.

Forced circulation against the cooling element will provoke condensation that will need to be evacuated outside via a draining pipe (that feeling that someone is spitting on you from upper floors when walking in BKK).

I think you will find that that is the Chinese tourists .......

[Anthony5]

I have Daikin inverter aircons in the bedrooms, which are used every night and set at 26°.

During the months December 2013 and January-February 2014, it the temperature at night would here go to 14°, hence for 3 months I didn't use any aircon but had the ceiling fan at the lowest speed instead.

During those 3 months there was little to no difference in my average electricity bill.

I use ceiling fans (and free breeze off the Gulf of Thailand) 95% of the time. Any month I do use the A/C even for a few days my electric bill is noticeably higher. There might be some greater efficiency if the A/C was on continually, but there's no way my bill would be the same as when I only use the ceiling fans.

So I take it that similar to me, you also have cavity walls, uPvc windows with insulated glazing and premium insulated ceilings together with Daikin inverter aircons?

Edited December 24, 2014 by Anthony5

[IMHO]

I have Daikin inverter aircons in the bedrooms, which are used every night and set at 26°.

During the months December 2013 and January-February 2014, it the temperature at night would here go to 14°, hence for 3 months I didn't use any aircon but had the ceiling fan at the lowest speed instead.

During those 3 months there was little to no difference in my average electricity bill.

I use ceiling fans (and free breeze off the Gulf of Thailand) 95% of the time. Any month I do use the A/C even for a few days my electric bill is noticeably higher. There might be some greater efficiency if the A/C was on continually, but there's no way my bill would be the same as when I only use the ceiling fans.

So I take it that similar to me, you also have cavity walls, uPvc windows with insulated glazing and premium insulated ceilings together with Daikin inverter aircons?

Phew, that's a whole lot of extrapolation from "my electricity bills are higher when I use AC"

[Digitalnomade]

maybe it s better to build house with the Thai style. set bedrooms second floor and live under the house during the day. open all window during night, set fan and have breeze when sleeping.

a/c has no place in Thailand. in the long term, it affect your body badly and make you poor. a/c is simply unhealthy, just Google it.

living in caves is much better.! it s 100 percent natural

Edited December 24, 2014 by Digitalnomade

[mercman24]

what a stupid statement about air-con,never heard anyone dying of air-con poisoning, so you expect me to sit in my car, sweating my bo**cks off, and go home to my house enduring the same, what a load of rubbish, have a nice time in your cave,

[CajunCruiser]

The OP, and indeed the subject of the discussion, is based on a false dichotomy. We should not be thinking in terms of either A/C or ceiling fan, but in terms of both.

The additional air circulation from a fan (ceiling or other location) can keep people comfortable when the temperature is a degree or two warmer (up to 5 degrees F) than would be needed for comfort without the additional circulation. A fan, as has clearly been shown, is cheaper to run than an A/C compressor. With a fan, the A/C thermostat can be set at a higher temperature, which means the compressor does not cycle on as often with the accompanying peak surge in power consumption, or run as much, resulting in significant long term cost savings over running A/C alone, and more comfort (for most people) than fan alone.

This mode of operation was very successful in the old (people's) bars in Washington Square.

It establishes a good compromise between those (like me) who prefer it cool and would perspire in still air at 25 degrees at Thai humidity levels, and those who would feel too cold at a lower temperature. (I'm thinking farang guys and local gals).

The thing to remember is that the fan is useful only when blowing on a person, so switch it off as you leave, perhaps as you raise your A/C thermostat a notch or two.

[Swelters]

maybe it s better to build house with the Thai style. set bedrooms second floor and live under the house during the day. open all window during night, set fan and have breeze when sleeping.

a/c has no place in Thailand. in the long term, it affect your body badly and make you poor. a/c is simply unhealthy, just Google it.

living in caves is much better.! it s 100 percent natural

I have lived in Bangkok as you suggest for several years in the past (click pic), inspired in some degree by the enjoyable village style of socializing that comes with spending daytime under the house. But I don't recommend county style habitat for most city sites because it does not often fit with the impersonal, noisy, polluted urban scene. But city living does not necessarily demand significant aircon if you plan it right and are open to reasonable adaptation to tropical climate and culture.

In fact urban concrete highrise construction offers a benefit, among others, of cool thermal mass, which to return to the OP subject, can be leveraged with breezy fans.

The so-called preference for regular use of mechanically refrigerated air may be just a status symbol or a bad personal habit like watching too much TV or drinking beer all day. But I agree with many that nighttime use is desirable in the hot season, especially if one sleeps on western bedding which impedes natural body cooling.

Traditional Thai sleeping habits were based on low BMI and wood beds with bamboo mats and small fans, air con

was not really needed.

Swelters

[bankruatsteve]

How about A/C vs. sitting in the rain? Maybe that should be a new thread.

[cloghead]

what a stupid statement about air-con,never heard anyone dying of air-con poisoning, so you expect me to sit in my car, sweating my bo**cks off, and go home to my house enduring the same, what a load of rubbish, have a nice time in your cave,

Au contraire, mon ami...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1976_Philadelphia_Legionnaires%27_disease_outbreak

"On July 21, 1976, the American Legion opened its annual three-day convention at the Bellevue-Stratford Hotel in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. More than 2,000 Legionnaires, mostly men, attended the convention. The date and city were chosen to coincide with America’s celebration of the 200th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence at Philadelphia in 1776.^[1]

On July 27, three days after the convention ended, Legionnaire Ray Brennan, a 61-year-old retired Air Force captain and an American Legion bookkeeper, died at his home of an apparent heart attack. Brennan had returned home from the convention on the evening of July 24 complaining of feeling tired. On July 30, another Legionnaire, Frank Aveni, aged 60, also died of an apparent heart attack, as did three other Legionnaires. All of them had been convention attendees. Twenty-four hours later, on August 1, six more Legionnaires died. They ranged in age from 39 to 82, and, like Ray Brennan, Frank Aveni, and the three other Legionnaires, all had complained of tiredness, chest pains, lung congestion, and fever.^[1]

Three of the Legionnaires had been patients of Ernest Campbell, a physician in Bloomsburg, Pennsylvania, who noticed that all three men had been at the Legionnaires convention in Philadelphia. He contacted the Pennsylvania Department of Health. Officials at the American Legion also began getting notices of the sudden deaths of several members, all at the same time. Within a week, more than 130 people, mostly men, had been hospitalized, and 25 had died.^[1]

Centers for Disease Control medical technologist George Gorman (left) and Jim Feeley, examining culture plates upon which the first environmental isolates of Legionella pneumophils had been grown

Epidemiology

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention mounted an unprecedented investigation and, by September, the focus had shifted from outside causes, such as a disease carrier, to the hotel environment itself. In January 1977, the Legionella bacterium was finally identified and isolated and was found to be breeding in the cooling tower of the hotel’s air conditioning system,^[2] which then spread it through the building.^[3][4] This finding prompted new regulations worldwide for climate control systems ^"

I can't believe I'm so drunk/stoned bored I actually answered this post

PS I ain't driving anywhere today (or, hopefully, tomorrow)

Edited December 24, 2014 by cloghead

[Moonlover]

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I've lived in the tropics for the past 20 years, the last 10 of them in here in Phuket. I still don't understand how people are comfortable with a setting of 26C. No wonder your electricity bills are low, AC isn't going to be doing very much work at all with that high a set point. 21-22 for sleeping and 23-24 during the day is a more realistic comfort level for me at least. Maybe its an english tthing, were more accustomed to being cold and therefore prefer a cooler climate overall.

all my aircons are set to 26ºC but my electricity bills are not exactly low:

may..........20,747.-

june.........19,950.-

july...........20,683.-

august.....19,411.-

currency Thai Baht not Viet Nam Dong! alt=whistling.gif>

How many is 'all' Naam?

[Gentmartin]

Where you are in TH also matters too, of course. AC constitutes the variable range of our bill - i.e. without it we get down to high 5K's, best case (that includes the indoor unit fans running though). We are cooling ~300sqm of 400sqm, but duty cycles on the outdoor compressors are usually fairly low.

If we have a lot of visitors we can spike right up though - last Songkhran with 15 people and 6 bedrooms + a study occupied, and 9000w RMS of Crown-powered JBL speakers running most of the time, we hit 15K Baht

bingo!

something that a lot of people don't know is that a human being (depending on body mass and activity) is a heat source of 300-600 btu/h plus added latent heat due to humidification of the air.

Might i just add to this excellent point that this is the reason people with shops have higher BTU Aircons for the floor space as when calculating BTU required, you must take into account the number of people regularly in the room........

Now, lets get on to the equally interesting topic of bus timetables....just a second whilst i put on my anorak lol ;-)

by the way, your leccy bills are HUGE !!!!!! but you know what Freud said about men with huge electric bills..........

[ToddinChonburi]

OH MY GOD HOW BIG IS YOUR TENT !!!!!!

[Xrey24]

I sleep with the AC at 21 C. I couldn't think of a fan that would give me that much cool air!

[Moonlover]

what a stupid statement about air-con,never heard anyone dying of air-con poisoning, so you expect me to sit in my car, sweating my bo**cks off, and go home to my house enduring the same, what a load of rubbish, have a nice time in your cave,

Au contraire, mon ami...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1976_Philadelphia_Legionnaires%27_disease_outbreak

"On July 21, 1976, the American Legion opened its annual three-day convention at the Bellevue-Stratford Hotel in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. More than 2,000 Legionnaires, mostly men, attended the convention. The date and city were chosen to coincide with America’s celebration of the 200th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence at Philadelphia in 1776.^[1]

On July 27, three days after the convention ended, Legionnaire Ray Brennan, a 61-year-old retired Air Force captain and an American Legion bookkeeper, died at his home of an apparent heart attack. Brennan had returned home from the convention on the evening of July 24 complaining of feeling tired. On July 30, another Legionnaire, Frank Aveni, aged 60, also died of an apparent heart attack, as did three other Legionnaires. All of them had been convention attendees. Twenty-four hours later, on August 1, six more Legionnaires died. They ranged in age from 39 to 82, and, like Ray Brennan, Frank Aveni, and the three other Legionnaires, all had complained of tiredness, chest pains, lung congestion, and fever.^[1]

Three of the Legionnaires had been patients of Ernest Campbell, a physician in Bloomsburg, Pennsylvania, who noticed that all three men had been at the Legionnaires convention in Philadelphia. He contacted the Pennsylvania Department of Health. Officials at the American Legion also began getting notices of the sudden deaths of several members, all at the same time. Within a week, more than 130 people, mostly men, had been hospitalized, and 25 had died.^[1]

Centers for Disease Control medical technologist George Gorman (left) and Jim Feeley, examining culture plates upon which the first environmental isolates of Legionella pneumophils had been grown

Epidemiology

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention mounted an unprecedented investigation and, by September, the focus had shifted from outside causes, such as a disease carrier, to the hotel environment itself. In January 1977, the Legionella bacterium was finally identified and isolated and was found to be breeding in the cooling tower of the hotel’s air conditioning system,^[2] which then spread it through the building.^[3][4] This finding prompted new regulations worldwide for climate control systems ^"

I can't believe I'm so drunk/stoned bored I actually answered this post

PS I ain't driving anywhere today (or, hopefully, tomorrow)

Sighting 'Legionnaires Disease' as case against domestic A/C is totally irrelevant. The bacterium that causes this ailment breeds in the lukewarm water of the cooling towers of large industrial scale plants. Your domestic A/C is a completely different system which does not have water cooling.

[Naam]

<script type='text/javascript'>window.mod_pagespeed_start = Number(new Date());</script>

I've lived in the tropics for the past 20 years, the last 10 of them in here in Phuket. I still don't understand how people are comfortable with a setting of 26C. No wonder your electricity bills are low, AC isn't going to be doing very much work at all with that high a set point. 21-22 for sleeping and 23-24 during the day is a more realistic comfort level for me at least. Maybe its an english tthing, were more accustomed to being cold and therefore prefer a cooler climate overall.

all my aircons are set to 26ºC but my electricity bills are not exactly low:

may..........20,747.-

june.........19,950.-

july...........20,683.-

august.....19,411.-

currency Thai Baht not Viet Nam Dong! alt=whistling.gif>

How many is 'all' Naam?

17 in the main house, 2 in the staff house.

[Naam]

Citing 'Legionnaires Disease' as case against domestic A/C is totally irrelevant. The bacterium that causes this ailment breeds in the lukewarm water of the cooling towers of large industrial scale plants. Your domestic A/C is a completely different system which does not have water cooling.

[Naam]

If you set the aircon to dehumidify mode the humidity will drop and the temperature will stay about the same but it will feel like the temp dropped about 10 deg.

The aircon will use much less electricity in dehumidify mode.

make that drop 2ºC please and note that the aircon does not use much less electricity during dehumidification mode. the savings are caused that after dehumidifying you need less compressor running time to maintain a comfortable environment.

[lcp0761]

Not so sure

If you consider that there is a comfort element in all of this that should be considered in the assessment and it could be that the AC is the better option.

Once the temp has been reached by the AC then it doesn't take much Electric to maintain that setting especially if it is 25C (proved to be the most economic setting by pure volume if not statistically proved)

After the set temp has been reached by the AC then the AC room fan is the most comfortable (for me at least) the room ceiling fan leads me to dry mouth syndrome and is much louder then the AC fan and less direct in your face type of thing.

n210mp makes an excellent point on the temperature & electric advantages of an AC.

Another benefit of an AC system is that it "conditions" the air or removes dust or impurities in the air which helps those who suffer from allergies. A ceiling fan merely circulates these dust particles.

Edited December 24, 2014 by lcp0761

[Don Aleman]

Your search for knowledgeable people has ended ! The air con, COMPRESSOR, NOT THE FAN IN THE AIR UNIT is the culprit gobbling up wattage so, coincidentally if you run your fan and the air con simultaneously, your cost will go down as the distribution is more efficient and will shut down the hungry compressor more often !

[Naam]

Your search for knowledgeable people has ended ! The air con, COMPRESSOR, NOT THE FAN IN THE AIR UNIT is the culprit gobbling up wattage so, coincidentally if you run your fan and the air con simultaneously, your cost will go down as the distribution is more efficient and will shut down the hungry compressor more often !

the compressor is the culprit? you don't say!

will i save on electricity if i cut the cables to the hungry compressor?

[Pib]

Your search for knowledgeable people has ended ! The air con, COMPRESSOR, NOT THE FAN IN THE AIR UNIT is the culprit gobbling up wattage so, coincidentally if you run your fan and the air con simultaneously, your cost will go down as the distribution is more efficient and will shut down the hungry compressor more often !

The compressor will cut off when the temperature sensor on the inside unit says it has reached your temperature setting. If you have the temperature setting of say 23C, the compressor won't kick off until the inside temp reaches 23C even if you have ten fans blowing the air around. Now those ten fans will most likely make you feel cooler due to air movement across you body but the air is still at whatever temperature it happens to be at. So, if feeling cooler due to the air movement, you can set the temp to a higher setting, say 25C, which will then make the compressor cut off sooner---that is at 25C vs 23C...thereby saving you some electricity usage.

Edited December 24, 2014 by Pib

[Naam]

some people prefer their blowjobs by fans. to each his own

[williet98248]

I've lived in the tropics for the past 20 years, the last 10 of them in here in Phuket. I still don't understand how people are comfortable with a setting of 26C. No wonder your electricity bills are low, AC isn't going to be doing very much work at all with that high a set point. 21-22 for sleeping and 23-24 during the day is a more realistic comfort level for me at least. Maybe its an english tthing, were more accustomed to being cold and therefore prefer a cooler climate overall.

all my aircons are set to 26ºC but my electricity bills are not exactly low:

may..........20,747.-

june.........19,950.-

july...........20,683.-

august.....19,411.-

currency Thai Baht not Viet Nam Dong!

Wow. You must be running several machines 100% of the time. I run the LR AC in the evenings and the Bedroom AC every night; both set at 25 degrees. My electric bill runs a bit over 3,000 a month. Used to be around 4K but I disconnected one of my three fridges. I find 26 a bit warm for me. Before moving here I lived at 6000 feet in a ski resort where the winter nighttime temps could get to minus 20 degrees F or more. Had to run the heaters to keep the temps comfortable. Even in the summers it could get into the 40s and 50s at night. Used to cold nights.

[Pib]

I run one 18K BTU A/C 24/7 to cool an area on my the first story of my two story house and another 20K BTU upstairs in the master bedroom all night. 3 frigs running, plenty of electronics & fans running, lights on outside for part of the night, etc. My bill averages around Bt10K for an average of around 2,000KWH per month...up to around Bt12K in the hot months...down to around Bt7K in the cooler months. I live in Bangkok. And actually I have 7 A/Cs in my home but only 2 or 3 get significant usage unless I have guests staying over then some more would get usage.

But someone else can't really use this for comparison to their residences because everyone has different sized A/Cs, differently insulated residences, different sized rooms/homes, live in different parts of Thailand that can range significantly in temp & humidity, people use different temp settings to make their body feel comfortable, some people turn off their A/C while going to work and then back on again when at home, some people have pool pumps running a lot, etc.

So many factors can affect A/C electricity usage and just overall home usage....comparing electricity usage between people can be like comparing apples and oranges.

[Digitalnomade]

sweating like a pig is good for health.

it burns fat, weight loss, expel toxins, kill virus, clean pores.... this is the reason why USA is obese while afghans & Russian women are slim.

say no to drug and a/c.

Edited December 25, 2014 by Digitalnomade

[IMHO]

sweating like a pig is good for health.

it burns fat, weight loss, expel toxins, kill virus, clean pores.... this is the reason why USA is obese while afghans & Russian women are slim.

say no to drug and a/c.

Here's an obesity map of the world:

I'm struggling to find any correlation with temperature, and Russia appears to be the same shade of red as the USA.

Edited December 25, 2014 by IMHO