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I've seen a couple of posts by members who are using their mining rigs to generate heating for their homes. Also, I found a company that is selling a room heater with a couple of processors to mine ETH. Is this something that will gain popularity? If home room heaters can be used for mining, it will help to decentralise mining in the future.

It could, but it could also contribute to IoT hell as a poorly secured device. Then again, its probably worse if a hacker somehow uses it to set your house on fire.

On a more practical level, I'd assume it would require a wifi chip as well since you wouldn't want to run an ethernet cable anywhere you want to use your portable heater.

I think a lot of Canadian miners do this.

Last winter I moved a few miners into the house and opened up my furnace plenum's air intake to accept the exhaust. Considering I have an electric furnace this allows me to run equipment at a cost I would have to spend anyways.

I have heard of people using smaller units in individual rooms to meet the demand or fight a cold spot. The first guy who sold me equipment has heated his business in Winterpeg for 5 years now without turning on his gas furnace.

I can only speak to Asics but I feel it is helpful for colder climates to at least keep a small percentage of the hash in the hands of the people.

Edit: Forgot to mention the only draw back is noise, so mine in the basement at the furnace was not a problem

*For a few months out of the year.

Would it have to be noisy? I remember years ago, IBM manufactured a water cooled mainframe computer. Water cooling would simplify the dispersal of heat for room heating.

Fair point, I was referring more to the eth portable heater OP mentioned. I used my S7-LN (first asic I owned) to heat the upstairs of my townhouse through a Utah winter. Very effective, but the S7-LN is super quiet. Couldn't imagine heating a living area with an S9 or a T1 lol. An L3 perhaps with the fans around 2200 rpm. I'm using an L3 at 462 MHz to heat my GF's cubicle. Under around 2400 rpm and its not really noticeable at all. Can talk at normal volume.

How about this for a mental leap? If your mining rig is solar powered, you probably don't want to heat anythying, so why not use it to run n air conditioner? This article in The Scientific American discusses the possibility.
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/solar-refrigeration/
So now I have an interesting project for my van. Use solar power to generate electricity to mine coins, and use the generated heat to cool the interior of the van in summer. :)

Sarcheer has it right in regards to the asics in a living space. I've heard a few people talk about I think A6's, R4's, and  few down tuned others in offices and such until it gets warm

That's pretty cool. I've worked in a conventional ammonia plant. So we had to learn about absorption cooling but it was usually cost prohibitive.

I love the way that local environments find a way to use what they have an abundance of to innovate. I remember reading about a kid; I think it was in Africa. He set up his bike to work as the compressor to refrigerate a cooler so that medicine didn't spoil on long trips for delivery.

You'll have to update this thread if you manage to get that little project going. It will be neat to see the size required to reap the benefits for mining.

I also use my mining room to air dry my clothes quicker. That saves  bit on electric

Only one mining rig cannot really heat during winter times but can do that well during every other season of the year. Having 2 or more mining rigs in a relatively medium to big apartment like 2 Bedrooms plus 1 Kitchen can do that nicely.

I have only 2 small mining rigs with 4 graphic cards each in my small home 1 Bedroom plus 1 Kitchen and I have one mining rig in my kitchen and one in the room and they are always hot right now at this time of the year while in winter they do something but against real low temperatures they don't heat well.

It will only depend on where your country is specially in countries where it is always cold as the ambient temperature is really low and it will not damage your rig as mining takes a really great toll in hardware. Obviously tropical and humid countries is a not a possibility as they eould need massive cooling solutions to cool their hardware.

Agree with the previous answer. Last year I hired specialists from our local heating and cooling Fonko (http://fonko.co.nz/) service to install new ducted system at my house in Auckland. They did all work at affordable price. I live in New Zealand and I never heard about people who use their mining rigs to generate heating.

My 2 GTX 1070 (60° C) and 1 GTX 1070ti (69° C) heat the room very well in winter. Rig was standing at the aquarium. In the summer they had to remove it from the aquarium. Quickly began to evaporate the water and die fish. So you can use a large number of graphics cards to heat your home. I apologize for my English.

https://a.radikal.ru/a43/1807/9f/4451ca2a9929.jpg (https://radikal.ru)

best 'high risk' crypto mining photo ever. If that shelf breaks (or the rig slides off) you going to have lots of fun. But to the OP, sure, rigs make great fan heaters, just less effective than heating systems to move heat round your house.

Humorist. Have you heard the sound of several dozen video cards? You run away from home in a couple of days :) There are a lot of projects with water-cooled video cards. But there are a lot of drawbacks, because it will have to upgrade the video card cooling system and lose the warranty.

I have a room in my basement dedicated to mining for my ~80 gpus. I have great ventilation so I don't have issues removing heat, even in the summer. That said I've recently been researching ways to "move" the heat to another part of the house using something like a heat pump.

I heat my house with a heat pump, so I am also considering getting some 24" ducting that I can attach to the exauhst and route directly over to the outside heat pump in the winter so it can reuse the heat to heat the house.

I don't like to just let the heat radiate into the house in the winter for two reasons.

1 - First floor gets a little too hot.
2 - There is a smell, even if it is safe to breathe, I don't like the smell.

I'm currently using the Z9 mini to provide heat to my electric water heater that has a built in heat pump to heat the water. Reduced my daily water heating cost by $0.50.

During the summer my GF hates me as we live in a three room appartment, and i got one 8 card rig. During the summer it gets hot as balls in here, but during the winter she always says "Can you not crank up the power? Its not making enough heat"  ;D ;D

My farm is well heated balcony in the winter. Previously, clothes were dried at home because it froze on the balcony. Now, thanks to the mining the clothing is perfectly dry on the balcony in winter :)

It is major issue in mining rig but everyone know the mining rig will produced 80 degree Celsius so we need Air conditioner or cooling fan because maximum heat will be produced in GPU card so anytime this will broken or burst in some chips so better we should maintain and monitor the mining rig we don't worried about the heating issue.

There's definitely a synergy between oil cooled ASICS and oil filled radiatiors - solves the noise issue as well :)

Just think of mining rigs as space heaters. In fact, every watt that a mining rig consumes is equivalent to the heat it puts out as a watt a space heater puts out. That's what all that electricity your rig is using does, generate heat. Last winter I had a 4000w rig running on a 30amp 250v circuit, full power dualmining ETH+DCR. I kept the rigs in a grow tent and used a 710cfm silent inline to draw air thru the tent and pump it out. My 1000sqft apt was easily 80F most of the winter. Some days I had to open windows even though it was 35F outside, some days when it was closer to 0F I had to supplement with a little central heating.

Our ETH mining rigs on liquid cooling can be very effectively used for room heating. The minimal level of noise of 30 DBa (which is a bit louder than a whisper, quiter than a regular conversation and almost the same noise level as your fridge) makes it a perfect room "companion". 
And it will keep the temperature high enough to save some energy on heating bills, but not enough to make you turn on the air conditioner.
Comino N1 is enough to keep a 25-30 square meter room comfortably warm.

Our Grando - industrial device, is built to create less excess energy and to recycle it back for heating. Liquid cooling helps recuperate the heat from the device, transport it and use it effectively in any other facility. But you would not need that much to heat you room )))