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Winter is coming and will again to grapple with the question of heating. Does anyone know whether it is possible to heat the room using GPU hardware. When working they produce a lot of heat. Is this enough heat to heat the house. I think it's a good idea to make money and not to pay for heating. What do you say? Anyone have experience?

Yes many people up north turn their fan on and circulate the heat throughout their house

I have a friend that has 2kW of rigs in his house, and by his comments I understood that without a good forced airflow to keep the rigs far away from the bedrooms they simply dry too much the air.

There is a small amount of synergy to be had with capturing the waste heat from mining rigs but in general natural gas is a much cheaper energy source to heat a house with compared to electricity. You can lookup efficiency comparisons between natural gas home central air heating systems and an electric space heater. In my region natural gas costs 1/5th that of electricity to produce each BTU of heat.

I move my rigs inside into my house (they are usually in the garage) during the winter and literally heat my 1800 square foot house with them. When it gets cold I simply open the door to the office (where the rigs are) and put a fan in the doorway to push the heat into the rest of the house. I can heat the house by about 5-10 degrees just by opening the door and turning on the fan for a few minutes. With the door closed, the office sits at around 80 degrees.

The only issue is that the rigs can be a little loud with office door open and the fan running -- but at least I'm saving money on the heat bill.

I have a one floor house, so I am not sure if this would work with a 2 story house.

My rig consumes about 1kW, so it is OK to heat the room when the temperature is below 10 C.

Natural gas is actually cheaper for heating but it is not needed to operate drilling rigs. What sense to heat the house with natural gas if it is done by drilling rigs which earn at this point coins. I have a small house but I do not have heat. I heat the house with gas. But about 35% of the winter I save.

I've got a few gpu rigs and I plan on spacing them out throughout my house in the winter. A few of them are liquid cooled so I can place them in common areas and still hear myself think lol.

Yes, it's surely possible to heat a room with a GPU mining rig. My humble 6-GPU 1060 rig actually makes my room almost unbearable to stay in during the day. Although my room is not that big, it is enough to fit a bed, study desk, a book shelf, and of course a gaming turned mining-rig (on a table).

The question i'd like to know is if we can afford to increase hashrates a little because of the decrease in temps.

This will be the third Winter in a row I have exclusively used GPU mining to heat my house. I live in a cold climate where winters temperatures often drop below 0 °F (-17.78 °C) and even on "warm" days are normally under 32 °F (0 °C). So yes it is very doable and almost unavoidable, especially if you move a few rigs into your house.

I normally keep most of the rigs in either a shed out in the back yard or in my garage during warmer months, but in the Winter I probably have a dozen rigs scattered throughout the house and it keeps it quite cozy. In fact, I normally have to keep a few windows open even in the Winter to keep it from getting too warm inside. I would say the only time I do have to close most of the windows are the few times the outside temperatures drop down to below -30 °F (-34.44 °C).

So one 5-6 GPU rig will be able to heat most average sized rooms as effectively as a space heater, and depending on the size of your house you can easily heat the whole place with enough rigs.

GoT fan here! Saw the title of your thread and immediately realized that you were talking about mining.

I do believe that one GPU alone is enough to heat a single room especially if it is a properly closed room.

Hello) I live in Novosibirsk, Russia! Now we have a cold night. In the afternoon + 5 ° C, and at night -2. My mines with a total capacity of 1,700 watts. stand on a glassed-in balcony. The temperature is now +30 ° C on the balcony, and on the street now + 1 ° C degrees Celsius. Waiting for the winter to see how they warm up the balcony (2 square meters)

There is definitely a lot of heat that comes of off GPU mining rigs, I don't know if it would be enough to heat an entire home but it would definitely be enough to supplement your heat and allow you to turn down the thermostat a couple of degrees. I have been running the a/c strong all summer with the heat and now that it's getting colder I can already tell the cards are keeping the place a bit warmer than it would normally be. So maybe the lower heating costs will absorb the extra money I spent on a/c all summer!!

It is possible to heat but it does depend on the size of room myself I would not want a rig in my room as I sleep. I have seen some setups where the rig has ducts to spread heat to other rooms.

i am actually keeping my window open on the mining room and still can't see any difference in the house temperature  ;D

Dry air? Is that harmful?

Why would the air dry from that little heat generated by computer components anyway?

I heated my condo last year with two A2 Terminators using six quiet fans in each.  Never had to run the heat.
Bought a house this year and I plan to have an Antminer D3 and L3 exhaust into the furnace ductwork.  The heat will passively drift into the house until the gas furnace circulates the hot exhaust along with the warm air.
There Is a humidifier tied to the furnace though pressure in the ducts will prevent water vapor from drifting back to the miners.

Could also use one to heat my garage.

Come spring I may patch them into a basement bathroom exhaust duct.

Near Chicago.

Yes, there are bad effects, that you wouldn't want in your home. Just go to a server room and you know, what I mean. And you will have extra costs on air conditioning and so on.
Here is a thread where experienced members already calculated the heating effects.
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=320984.0

To combat too dry of air, they do sell things call humidifiers which can be bought in sizes ranging from humidifying a single room to a whole house. Dry air will result from any heat source that doesn't provide some type of moisture, so mining rigs are no different in that regard. Also, on most furnaces you can run the fan alone without the heat being on, so you can take advantage of this feature to circulate the warm air throughout your house.

Where I live it's not allowed to build a house if it doesn't have a modern ventilation system with heat recovery, I think it's been like that for the last 15-20 years already.

Ventilation unit takes dirty warm air, runs it through a filter and heat exchanger. Waste air is then dumped outside and extracted heat used to warm fresh air which comes through a filter to the exhanger. Fresh warm air is then distributed around to house, efficiency is somewhere in the 80-90% range.

Silent, efficient and works too. There are options to integrate at least heat pump, solar and geothermal heating/ cooling.

Mining rigs can easily heat even a big house even if it's freezing cold outside.

Thanks,  I will check that out. I remember in the past there were (or maybe they still sell) some kind of boxes filled with water that you had to attach to radiators. Later I read that those things were no good because of mold forming.  What do you think?

Yeah that would work. I know a few peopls that exhaust the hot air from the basement. Where they run hardware, push that air up through out the house. Well atleast to the main floor. Lol.
Im not sure if bringing up rigs or leaving in thr living room is a good idea.

You know nothing Jon Snow.

;)

But seriously... While these rigs would perfectly heat your house, they have three main caveats:
- space
- noise
- ugliness

I wouldn't want to know what my wife would say if I started scattering mining rigs across our (already too small) house... :P

As a person who live in Southeast Asia, I really hope that would be winter. :D :D
The heat that the mining rig produce will make our house literally like a sauna if didn't put properly.
When I return from work or anything the moment when I open the door can instantly get the sauna feel :'(
 

It isn't. I live in the North East and have oil heat.  The source of heat won't make the air any more or less dry.  If it gets too dry all that is needed is a humidifier. 

Electricity (mining) is more expensive than natural gas for heating.

I wouldn't buy mining machines just for heating, but if you plan on mining anyway, it helps.

You would still have to figure out what to do with the extra heat once spring and summer come around.

That is right. If in the very cold area, you can mine all year around.

Yep, gotta love it ... for the 4th year in a row I'll be moving a few rigs into the office ... this year they will be 4-card 1080ti rigs - they are quiet and throw out quite a bit of heat.

... a heater that earns you money  ;D

I wish i live in this place. In my place 34 ° C in the air ><

The low temperature will give you a free miner cooling but you have to look after for the humidity in the air. It could harm your miner if it's too high.

Guess what? it's 35 ° C on my place and I ain't never experience winter or just the snow itself. Too bad also, because of the weather and the price of the electricity it's impossible for me to have a profit in mining.
@Sergey, that's too much generated heat lol, it's feels like you summoned an artificial sun located just on your balcony.


Really? Is there some recorded cases of miner getting rekt by the humidity? I'm curious to know if there is.

I am doing this in my room only which is not a big surface. I have a PC with 3 GTX , 2x1060 and 1x1050ti and I never have the need to turn on the air condition although the outside temperature here in Italy has even been sometimes at 8 degree celsius which is considered cold enough for me to turn on the air condition. So yes I am saving heating power by warming my room with these 3 cards, at night I even keep my window just a tiny bit open in order to have fresh air come in as the air from 3 GPU-s may not be the healthiest air.

Time to OC +10%  ::)

Most modern humidifiers have a replaceable filter you swap out each season to prevent anything like that. They also sell additives you can add to the humidifier water to prevent mold if that is an issue in your region. Usually Winter air is pretty dry so mold isn't a big concern, but I suppose if people didn't do regular maintenance on something, like periodically clean the water basin, anything is possible.

I could be only a joke Oo

have you tought about the pice for the power.
You can take an electronic heater it would be less excpensive

wtf is wrong with you ? mining rigs make more money than they spend on electricity, so basically you get paid to live in a warm house. Well, "heaters" themselves are bit pricey but if you can afford it then go for it.
I have 3 rigs in the house (~140m2) and that's perfect for winter.

basically you get paid to live in a warm house.. nice one!
I have 2 rigs in my room and I've been suffocating all summer, now I might have to open a window during winter so yeah you can heat a room with gpus but I'm not sure about an entire house tough.

I had three Baikal 2000's in the garden house/shed (isolated shed). 35 degrees in the morning xD

We've just come out of winter here in Australia, I've been heating my whole house with 4 rigs, we haven't put the heater on once  :)
It was really nice waking up/coming home to a toasty house!

Summer will be interesting, with a very hot summer predicted!  :o

Cheers,
Matt

Correction: You wouldn't like live here.  ;) You'd like place mining farms here. Winter of 8 month per year is objective reality in Siberia.

To @Sergey-Majner: How you organize the ventilation of the balcony during summer? It's short but it's quite hot. If you have 30C in balcony at even 5C outdoor temperature?

Depends on the algo.
Mining ZEC will give a LOT of heat, while for example lyra2z wont give almost any heat.

I actually think ASICs would give more heat than GPUs.

Absolutely use the heat to help supplement the home heating if you already have rigs. Why on earth would anybody vent the heat to the outside during the winter? If your rigs are in a room by themselves, just open the door and put a box fan to blow the warm air out. But remember warm air rises and cold air sinks, so its best to elevate the fan off of the ground to allow for better cold air flow into the mining room. If you can get the fan near the top of the doorway, that would be the perfect scenario.

Mine are in the old theater room turned mining room that is in the basement, I close off all ducts in the basement and let the rigs heat the basement and most of the time its still too warm for me and have a window cracked. This year I'm thinking about installing ducting from the mining room into the furnace ducting to help circulate the warm air. The furnace is right on the other side of the wall from the mining room so it shouldn't be too hard. 1 duct near the top of the wall for the hot air and another at the bottom for the cold air return. I'm thinking out loud now: split the cold air return from the house and run it to the bottom vent in the mining room, install damper to shut house cold air off after the split. Vent at top of room goes back into the house cold air that is the inlet (suction) for the furnace blower.
Something like:

   | |
   | | Cold air return from house
   | |

   [ ]___
   [  ___ "T" cold air into mining room vent at floor level
   [ ]

   {\} Damper closed

   [ ]___
   [  ___ "T" Hot air from mining room vent at ceiling level
   [ ]

   | |
   | |
    To Furnace

Winter is a good buy for miners to dig a coin. Low temperatures will make the excavator work more efficiently, consuming less power. So it will be more profitable for investors.

The question is to vague to give a Real answer. But if you have many GPU or a small house that would be a very good way not to waste energy and save some money.

I have 12 GPU in a room which is around 25mq big and it has a temperature that is 10 celius degrees greater than other rooms.

My favorite time of year. My most profitable season, and most comfortable

last years I used gas to heat my apartment, this year some GPU @ ~ 1500-2000w
will see how cold it can get until I need to get more GPU

I use similar power and my apartment is very warm.

12 cards kept my entire house 74F while it was 30-40F.
I recently moved my mining rigs to a commercial location and am so sad to be back in my 60-68F cold ass house.