Recirculate Air - with your furnace

Did you know that you can recirculate air with your furnace to cool the house, even without using the air conditioner associated with your furnace?

Moving air feels cooler because of moisture evaporating off of your skin. If you use the "fan only" setting on your furnace, it will move air around the house and make it feel more comfortable.

I know individuals that use the recirculation mode on their furnace 24 hours a day during the summer to help keep themselves cooler.

I can't say that I would do that, because of the cost of electricity, but I certainly use this approach during the hottest weather that we have.

Recirculating with the furnace works best if you live in a climate that is relatively dry. Recirculating moist air will be less effective because it doesn't evaporate moisture off of you nearly as well as dry air.

Another variation on the theme is to use your air conditioner to cool down the house, and then simply recirculate the cooled air using the furnace. You could use this approach and perhaps save a third of the cost of cooling the air.

I say a third the cost because cooling the air requires operation of your furnace fan, the compressor motor, and a cooling fan motor on the compressor unit. They only operate intermittently, but for half the day, two of them wouldn't operate at all.

If you only use the compressor for half the day and rely on recirculation of the cooled air for the other half of the day, then the compressor motor and compressor cooling fan aren't working throughout the entire day, just the furnace fan that recirculates the air.

The biggest power consumer has to be the compressor motor, so this is where you'll find most of your savings.

Done with Recirculate Air, take me back to Ways to Save Energy