I always get a chuckle out of those who think New York is always snowy and frigid, even year round. When I hear, “Do you wear jackets all year? Does it ever get warm enough to wear short sleeves and shorts?,” I summon up a few hundred memories of trudging out of sweltering subway stations like the walking, human waterfall that I am from May to September.

At least once I’m home, I’m among the gloriously air conditioned heaven of my apartment. But for a lot of reasons, I outfitted every room in my apartment with a fan so that I can set the thermostat higher on my A/C and yet feel just as cool.

You should, too, if you want to lower your electricity bill, ease your burden on the environment, and reduce your contribution to the heat island effect.

circulation, not gusts

The heat island effect occurs when air conditioners dump all that indoor heat out into the streets, which leads to cities becoming significantly warmer than their surroundings. After all, heat can’t be destroyed in this universe, only displaced somewhere else.

So how can you stay cool indoors if you’re not spitting all this heat outdoors? Vornado claims that its designs circulate air around an entire room, rather than fire a concentrated, narrow gust of wind straight out of its fans.

I’ve only got anecdotal evidence to say that it works. Rather than aim my Vornado 630 right at me when I sit at my desk or on the couch, I point it upward and toward a wall, sending a constant blast of wind that bounces around the room.

I’ve been using it almost nonstop for five years without issue. In my bedroom on warm nights, I place a smaller Vornado 460 on top of my dresser for the same purpose. And on the desk in my office, I’ve got a tiny Vornado VFAN Mini Classic. It looks handsomely vintage in its seafoam green, metal glory.

The VFAN Mini Classic doesn’t circulate air around an entire room like the larger Vornado 460 and 630. It’s a tabletop fan, and that one does aim right at me when I’m working at my office desk, reading over morning coffee, or noodling away on the guitar.

How much energy you’ll save is functionally impossible for me to quantify. There are so many variables to account for just to come up with a baseline amount: the temperature you set on the thermostat, the size of your home, the efficiency and power of your air conditioning system, and how much your local utility company charges.

Even the time at which you’re drawing that electricity can change your charges, given that electricity during peak use hours is often billed at a higher rate than at low-use times of the day.

What I can do is hurl some numbers at you to show how much more energy-efficient (and therefore cheaper) fans are than air conditioners. “An average air conditioning unit can consume between 1,000 to 2,000 watts of power per hour,” according to Big Ass Fans, which is an actual manufacturer of—you guessed it—big-ass fans. I encounter them a lot in garages, both home and commercial.

Most often, I set my Vornado 630 and 460 to the lowest of their three power settings, at 34 and 28 watts per hour, respectively.

Using fans doesn’t completely eliminate my use of air conditioning. The East Coast is too balmy and warm in the summer for that. But I’ve knocked low triple digits off my monthly electricity bill, and I only need to run one fan at a time for whichever room I’m in.

Running this home experiment is low cost, low risk. And it pays for itself pretty quickly.