Bitcoin Forum

Hi ALL!

I am new to the forum.

I have a wood drying kiln room that I pay large amounts of electricity to generate heat to help dry the wood.

I want to change this practice by installing a bitcoin server room right next to it and piping the heat into my kiln.

I have a 11 feet long by 7 feet wide by 6 feet tall room to use.  Can someone please link me to what will fit in this space and how many? :)  Are there any threads on what the most recent machines are?  And how fast of internet connection do I need? I only have a cellular data 3G internet connection on the farm.

Thanks,
tb

I also commend you on the idea to use the heat for something rather than just bleed it off.  This is the kind of engineering thought that our world needs.  As far as very specifics, I can't give them to you, just want to commend you.  I can say that I think that 11 by 7 by 6 is plenty of space for probably as many miners as you care to afford.  Also, I think that a cellular 3g connection won't be too bad, the amount of data you have to send and receive shouldn't be too much.  However, my answers are obviously to general.

Without exact specs I can tell you that if the outside temp is 70 degrees you would be approaching 90 in the room (properly insulated) with a single 500gh unit drawing 2500 Watts at the wall (ie BFL mini rig).
If the room temp is above 30 degrees you can heat the room at a comfortable 70+

Internet connection doesn't need speed, but needs to be fairly reliable and low-latency, which I'd guess is a crapshoot if you're rural like me. In my case, I had to go out and buy a 3G/4G cell booster from Wilson Electronics. Has worked surprisingly well, but is fairly expensive.

Very interested in hearing about results from this experiment. Could also be useful in converting flank steak to jerky. ;D I've been wanting to pipe the cold from the basement to rest of house. Same sq. ft. as house and ~15*F cooler - generally dryer, too. Having trouble exchanging air with just a fan at the stairs, but don't really want to start drilling holes in the floor just yet (figured I'd try a couple case fans on the end of a couple PVC pipes going through floor of house into basement). :D

I'd recommend looking at bitcoin mining gear. Like, you could look into purchasing some GPU's but I would recommend 750 Ti's... Unfortunately they don't take a lot of power. (Never thought I'd complain about their efficiency  :D )

You could look at used BFL gear, most of that is fairly inefficient and cheap as well, so it would mine a small amount but generate lots of heat too.

This reminds me of some posts from 2011.  I remember one user ended up using the heat from his GPUs for a heated bathroom floor.  At least one person also used it to complement their pool heater in the winter.

its summer time, this might not be a good idea, unless you are in a cold place

   Feel free to  send me a pm for free advice.



First question is how much power are you using to dry your wood?

1000 watts an hour?   1 kwatt an hour is 15 cents x 24 = $3.60 usd a day  or about 108 a month.

Do you use that much power?

Or do you use 500 watts or 1500 watts?

I need to know how much power you are spending to tell you what to buy.

I set up 3 s-1's  undervolted and under clocked  they burn 560 watts and hash at   420gh.

My best guess is you will want s-1's for your task.  

3  =    560   watts
6  =  1120    "
9  =  1680    "
12 = 2240    "
15 = 2800   "

A simple 16 port switch and these are easy to setup.

A            plywood board with  up to 5 across and the psu
a second  plywood board on top  with up to 5 more

a third plywood board  with 5 more.

many s-1 are available as the s-3 upgrade has come out.

a 16 port switch is under 100 bucks


some links

how to under volt

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=526060.0;all
 switch

http://www.rakuten.com/prod/tp-link-tl-sg1016-10-100-1000mbps-16-port-gigabit-19-inch/213928097.html

about 50 on sale at ebay  .  look at some of them to get an idea of how they can stack. many photos.

http://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_odkw=ant%20miner%20s%201&_udlo=150&LH_BIN=1&_osacat=0&_from=R40&_udhi=250&_trksid=p2045573.m570.l1313&_nkw=antminer%20s%201&_sacat=0 (http://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_odkw=ant%20miner%20s%201&_udlo=150&LH_BIN=1&_osacat=0&_from=R40&_udhi=250&_trksid=p2045573.m570.l1313&_nkw=antminer%20s%201&_sacat=0)

you want to wick the heat away from the asics into the kiln

Well,here's what a wood kiln is:

http://www.woodmizer.com/us/PortableEquipment/Kilns/DH4000.aspx

220 volts @ 20-40 amps=7700 watts (35 amps average)

Wood is kept in the kiln for several weeks.

You could mine a lot of BTC with that kind of power  ;D

philipma1957's idea is very good (he's talking using older tech which is cheaper),just scale it up abit or..........

Look into these:

https://www.bitmaintech.com/productDetail.htm?pid=00020140704023505485N5SxDMkW0693

Say 400 watts each=20 miners (a little over the 35 amps)

At .725 BTC each = $9130 + power supplies & network cables & assorted gear.Rough guess,about $10,000+ or -   ;)

You may get a breakeven in 4-6 months......maybe if diff doesn't go ballistic in that timeframe.

Get an electrician to setup the power outlets & find a computer geek in your area to help set them up  8)

Nice to see some new innovation up in these threads. Good luck getting it up and working, OP.

3G shouldn't be an issue as long as the latency isn't too bad.

Keeping the miners happy without them overheating might be an issue since you are forcing the heat to a "pressurized area" rather than free expansion like an exhaust vent.

You would need a little thermal engineering for that and some isolation from 1 room to the other.

Depends, my rig at home reaches internal temperatures up to about 80-90 deg Celcius, and the climate is at around 30 deg. I sometimes turn on the air conditioning to cool it down, because the fan I have blowing at it doesn't even make a dent in the heat.

Nice idea though. I heard of someone who had your idea - or one very similar - to make a steam generator that helped power his bitcoin mining even more.

If you lived near a tide you could use that for electricity too!

I would love to see pics when this is finished. Please keep us updated

The problem is, ASIC would spoil in few months if it is close to the sea..

Wait, what? How close is "close to the sea"? I live on an island (Singapore) and we're surrounded by sea. Should be I be keeping my ASIC in a dehumidified area?

How close are you to the sea? Singapore is a big island, you might be 10 KM away from sea.

Tide powered btc mining with heat production used to dry a wood kiln.  This might be the "greenest" bitcoin idea out there.  Also, I remember a lot of bitcoin detractors decrying the "waste" of engery performed by miners hashing out blocks.

+1

Unfortunately tidal power is very unreliable compared to solar and wind.  There are fewer places where tidal changes are reliable enough to generate sustainable power.  Hopefully that will change in the near future.

Ya I remember seeing it on a guys house that was on the beach itself. He had it setup so every time the tide came in it ran into a trench that would generate electricity and store it for later use. I wasn't actually expecting you guys to take that idea seriously but wouldn't that be some shit?

Solar / Tidal / Wind powered bitcoin mining operation strictly powered by green sources and then using the heat to warm your house, charge your vehicle, etc.

That'll be the way of the future my friends

What the replies are missing is the a key consideration, the rate of drying. The rate of drying will be controlled by the temperature. The higher the temp, the faster the wood drys.

While I have no doubt the mining equipment can heat up a room, the max ambient air temp that an S1 miner could take is probably around 60C.

The air temperature of a kiln based wood dryer is probably much higher than 60C to speed the drying process.


To pass on another use for the coin mining heat would be to preheat the water in a tank feeding a water heater.

I've done some experiments and an S1 miner could probably heat 25 gal of water 20C above ambient.

Dryers use both heat, pressure, and flow rate to control dessication.  The exhaust temps will not be high but the flow rate will be elevated.

Wait a minute, maybe you meant another adjective other than reliable.  The tides are connected directly to the motions of the moon and the earth and their relative position to the sun.  What's more reliable than the fact that the earth turns on it's axis?  Maybe you're talking about the fact that the size of the tides varies a lot from locale to locale.

Have you seen the worms and floater and other devices that are trying to capture tidal power?  Most of them are not based on the coast since that land value is too high to warrant putting a plant down.  Most will be further in the water.  They need the constant wave action which is not always guaranteed except in some areas.  Same could be said for wind to a certain degree.  Solar is much more reliable (steady) compared to these 2.

To be honest I don't know much about those devices at all.  But the way you describe them makes them sound like they aren't relying on tides so much as on swells and surface waves.  If you put a turbine underwater at the mouth of a bay you can guarantee the rate of water running through the turbine based on the tides.  If you're talking about putting a bobber on the surface and using the up/down action of the surface waves that doesn't seem directly tied to the tides (excuse the pun).

Pretty much every environmental group would be opposed to putting a turbine at the mouth of a bay considering how ecologically sensitive such an area would be.  As noted above any use of tidal or wave action would require off shore deployment.

I have several 65-nm BFL's currently running and they are pumping out a great deal of heat.  Terrible for profitability and they suck quite a bit of juice.  With regards to your network connection, it really depends on the sustained latency you will have between your unit(s) and your pool.  Increased latency results in an increase in stale shares.

ref: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=10806.0

Good Idea on using the heat for a purpose....

During Canadian winters, I use miners a space heaters... And it drastically cuts down on my oil bill as I mostly heat the whole house. Right now during summer it is cool at nights, and I just leave windows open to expell heat in the basement.

There are two ways to reuse the heat... Venting via air, or hydronic. Each has their own advantages and disadvantages.

WRT air movement: move the heat via air ducting... However you have to consider a return air...  Without a return, things just don't work. Air flow might need to be filtered for dust and other contamination that is not good for electronics.

Or move the heat hydronicly via water.... Much more efficient, and also more expensive to implement. You would need to move the heat to your kiln, and then back. A third location may be needed to expend or further bleed off excess heat if the kiln has already built up a lot of heat.

In short, input temperature to miners... Miners raise temperature of hydronic (water), output temperature to kiln, and if required, further output temperature outside or someplace else (hot tub or pool perhaps, or heat a garage partly).

You would need to consider the water cooling equipment for electronics... Which is expensive. The list of miners that are water cooled is narrow, but you might be able to contact a company directly as you may be able to eliminate certain items such as a radiator (or reuse it on the 2nd stage of expelling excess heat.

As to the 3G cellular connection, I run a total of 3 KNC miners, one rock miner 450, 2 BFL jalapeños, and a total of 25 GPU's across 6 rigs for x11... All under a 4G (not LTE) bell canada turbo hub because I can't get DSL or cable.

The bandwidth usage is minimal for mining, but a lot of bandwidth is spent wrt to maintaining operating systems for me. With a 20 gig cap, downloading linux updates or rasp-pi uses up a lot of bandwidth.

I also use up a lot of bandwidth maintaining a block chain for certain coins... But multibit for Bitcoin saves bandwidth, but with alt coins you are generally SOL.


Sounds like a great project! Good luck.

Ryan

this is a great idea!! old used mining gear is a good way of saving money, however u need to think about administrating time and therefor i recommend only buying one kind of miners to make it easier. i would recommend used antminer s1's

Just last night I placed 2 rounds of frozen bread next to my antminer to defrost for a sarnie... took about 3 mins and was better than using the microwave or just leaving it on the kitchen table  ;D

If I was legit rich I would make a bunker in siberia full of ASIC machines and servers, all of this heat would deliver me nice cozy warmness and I would direct the heat to a system that delivers enough heat to cook. Ultimate self sustainable bitcoin experience  ;D

Like adamsworks, I use my S1's for space heaters. 

I have a server/mining room and this also acts as a furnace room; it heats up the basement and main floor (and it's huge).

I currently only run 1TH/s worth of OC'd S1's in my home with more on their way.

I've also used it to dry clothes, keep food / coffee warm, heat up water and even to dry my hair!  (My hair is down to my a$$)

In a way, the heat's a Godsend in winter but still a pita in the summer, which is usually rather short anyways.