Your Ceiling Fan Has a Dual Purpose Switch That You Might Not Know About

During the dog days of summer, ceilings fans feel like 19th-century smart-home gadgets that are just too good to be true as you lie with sweat dripping from your forehead and yearning for a slice of watermelon. With summer upon us, you might be contemplating life as you gaze on your ceiling fan, and well, it turns out that some people have been using their ceiling fans wrong, now common-knowledge thanks to a TikTok user.

While you might not be one of them, numerous people on the internet were shocked to learn that ceilings fans actually have dual-purpose switches that make your room hot in winter and cold in summer. Figures. 

@bertoncin

One. Little. Switch. ?‍♂️?‍♂️ ##foryou ##riseandshine ##layerup ##tellmeajoke

♬ original sound - bertoncin

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His room was like a sauna for six years

Anthony Bertoncin's little epiphany became viral on TikTok, bringing together the bewildered people who didn't know this was a thing. In the video, he says, "I finally realized that my ceiling fan has been making my room a sauna for six years."

Apparently, he was living in his house for six years, and he talks about how he always has his fan on to cool his room down because his room is hot all the time.

All it took was a little switch

"Fast forward to today, I face timing my friend, and while we are face timing, my friend switches the direction of his fan to heat his room in winter." 

And that was the moment Bertoncin knew he had made a big mistake. He was apparently waking up sweaty, feeling like he was in a sauna for the past six years just because he didn't know such a thing existed. When he flipped the switch, his room was much more cooler.

Majority of the people who didn't know were from the younger generation

Anthony says that the majority of the people who didn't know about this was the younger Millennials and Generation Z, Bored Panda reports. 

"My dad claims this was common knowledge 20 years ago but he didn’t show me this little trick, did he? Apparently, this trick is explained in every owner’s manual when you buy a ceiling fan but personally, I can’t tell you a single time me or one of my friends has bought a ceiling fan. Maybe they can add this as a lesson when they reform the education system!" he said.

How to engineer a ceiling fan

A ceiling fan is an overhead fan with a wide sweep that moves large volumes of air at low speed, and while you might understand the general concept behind how they work, let's look at how they function. 

The ceiling fan's mechanism is kind of simple: the lighter, warm air rises up while the cool, denser air sinks. The rotation mechanism of the ceiling fan is built in a way to attract the warm air upwards. 

As hot air rises up, the blades slice this air and push it down. This how the continuous process that circulates the whole room happens. So they don't really cool or heat the air, they only disperse it around. 

When it works in "reverse," it circulates the hot air that has risen to the ceiling down to the floor and helps you stay warm, much like in Bertoncin's case. However, make sure that your ceiling fan is working at a low speed in such a case, otherwise, it can still create a wind-chill effect.

So here you go! We thought you might appreciate this if you are one of those people who didn't know about this apparently well-hidden trick.