Circulating Warm Air for Dummies

Winter Ceiling Fan Direction

Boomers and, perhaps, Gen-Xers intuitively understand the concepts of clockwise and counterclockwise (anticlockwise if you speak British English) because they remember wall clocks with hands and dials. Millennials, not so much: they've come of age with digital clocks and, increasingly, smartphone displays. So it's probably not a surprise that there are dumbasses out there who don't know which direction is which, much like there are preschoolers who don't know left from right (as an aside, the Antisocial Network HQ dogs all know left from right: are your kids that smart?). Take, for instance, Stephanie Mitchell of Demand Media's SFGate.com property: Steph screwed the pooch when she answered the query "How to Help Distribute Home Heating With Ceiling Fans"; probably because she got confused... but in her case, it might have just been scientific illiteracy!

Of course, Stephanie waxed eloquent on the beauty of ceiling fans with prose such as

"Most people think of ceiling fans as a tool to help cool off a house during the summer, but you can use them in the winter to help boost your home heating system as well."

Unfortunately, Mitchell soon got herself in hot water with her explanation of how a ceiling fan works. Check out this rubbish:

"Because hot air rises, a lot of the energy your central heating uses warms the top of the room, near the ceiling. A ceiling fan running in reverse gently bounces the hot air off the ceiling and pushes it down along the walls, back into the part of the room you're actually inhabiting. " "[B]ounces the hot air off the ceiling"? Is this moron serious? Even the  stupidest homeowner knows that, to (help) force warm air downward in a room; because even Stephanie knows "hot air rises" (although some eHowians don't), the fan blades work to pull cool air upward, not "bounce hot air off the ceiling." What a maroon: how hard would a fan on a six-foot downrod have to work to get that bounce going?  Oh, and for what it's worth? Our grammarian winced at that "inhabiting" -- she might want to look up "occupying" instead...

No, Stephanie, the operative word is "circulate"; a word we'd have expected you to use more than once. Oh, and by the way? Not all fans are in "heating" mode when the blades are turning clockwise – you really should have instructed your readers to stand under the fan to see if there's a downward breeze or not (you don't want one for winter circulation).

But no, Mitchell just collected her Demand Media stipend and went on to write more articles about makeup and dating. Just once, we wish these freelancers would dance with the one that brung them (stay in their wheelhouse, stay in their comfort zone, etc.) instead of demonstrating once and for all that they're exactly who we think of when we're looking for Dumbass of the Day candidates..

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