Space Rental for Miners (Idea)

[Scatter Bastard]

Hey guys, I'm just getting started in the BTC world. This idea is in its first stages as I'm sure there's much I don't know, but I would love to get some discussion on this to see if its a viable idea that can help both people with space and miners.

My family owns a restaurant. We're in a shopping center and we've recently expanded into the building next to us. As one of his managers, I'm trying to find ways to bring in additional income from some empty space we have right now. This building is primarily being used for storage and office space, with very little power being consumed in this part of the restaurant. I have at least a 10ft. long wall where I feel that I could set up rows of mining stations. It's an entirely separate room off the main restaurant floor, and back near the kitchen area--So I don't think sound or heat will be an issue.

Most of this is baseless assumption (at least until anyone confirms), so please feel free to correct me.

- Power is an issue for serious miners trying to operate out of their home. There's a cap on how much power you can suck from a residential unit, and end up paying more once you cross a certain usage threshold (one which a restaurant would maintain without being anything out of the norm, thus *hopefully* not a large increase in price from usage increase).

- Space, heat, and just convenience. Running even four PCs in the room can be HOT as hell, unsafe, and very cluttering--if you could get all of that out of your room, would it be worth a small % in BTC mined, or small flat monthly fee?

- If this is an effective strategy for both miners and any small business owner with some extra space looking to both enter the BTC trade, we could set the blueprints to commercializing the process on a small scale all over. I'm sure there's some professional companies already offering this kind of service, but I'm not trying to develop a 5,000sq./ft storage facility, I want to just work with someone one on one. If that works, I personally know three or four small business owners with space that would be interested if a few more miners wanted to get involved.
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There are some glaring issues of course.

First, the legality--I have no clue if this is legal. I rent the space from the landlord already, so I can't see how I would be violating any laws.

Also, maintenance--If the cluster goes down overnight, I would have to run up there to restart I guess? Could it be set up to where I could virtually connect and set everything back up from my house (or the miner could)?

What else? Has this been tried before and I completely missed it? Is there any reason for a miner NOT to move the operation out of the house and onto a more stable power grid?

I'm not trying to make millions on this. I want to look back at the end of the day and be in the green, but primarily I'm becoming obsessed with Bitcoin. I'm intrigued by the mining process, and while I don't have the know-how or parts to get into it competitively, I do have the space and potential resources to help someone out that does.

Thanks in advance for any response!

Scatter

[1715249684]

1715249684

[Scatter Bastard]

Just sending this to the top before I goto work for the day--I would love some feedback!

[flyswatta]

About 10 years ago, I set up my pc with a local ISP for a web side project I was working on.  It's called Colo Hosting (as in Co-Location).  Basically they just gave me shelf space on a rack and a network connection for (I think it was $50/month).  I plunked my mid-tower pc (loaded with linux), plugged in the network, keyboard&mouse into their KVM and was good to go.

You may want to google colo services / hosting to get some more insight in how all that works.  

If I'm understanding you right, then I would contact you, we work out some terms and I just drive my PC down to your restaurant and plop it on a rack/shelf?

Some things to think about:
Power
Network
Some sort of access to keyboard/monitor (nothing worse than a PC crash and it's sitting on a bios startup screen saying 'Press F1 to continue')
Power
Cooling
What do I do if the network is down and I can't remote to my PC at 3:00AM?  Do I call you?
You'll need to manage a firewall to allow Customers access to their pc's (vnc/remote desktop, ssh) whatever.  Maybe you just tell them to get a VPN service and call it good.
Cable management - you have to route the power and network to the different shelves on the racks.  
Power
Network
Cooling

(I know I repeated myself....there's a reason)

Anyway, I'm sure there's more to it, but some of my thoughts off the top of my head.  Good Luck!

[Capitan]

Too complicated and doesn't sound like you know enough to pull it off and make it worth anyone's time to participate.

The main thing you didn't address is cooling. How will you cool that area? And do you know how many circuits are in that room, and the amps/voltage on each one? Your cost of electricity?

It is theoretically possible to do this but it doesn't sound like you know enough to do this without someone teaching you everything.

[Scatter Bastard]

I was just under the impression that there's a lot of miners running four/five ghetto rigged PC's and laptops out of an extra room in their apartment. A lot of the posts I saw when first poking around for them were people concerned with wires going everywhere, and their entire apartment/house being so hot they're not only dumping money into powering their systems, but also cooling their house. The other issue I saw someone bring up is that they're hitting the maximum amount of power their apartment can provide.

I don't personally want to start a Colo service on a grand scale, I'm more thinking of trying to reach out to someone in my area who's having those problems and wishes they could move it somewhere else. I would assume that someone without the money for an entirely proper set-up themselves wouldn't dream of paying an official company to do the hosting for them.

Also, in doing this it would completely submerge myself in the world of mining--which is what I'm so interested in. I don't have the money to put down even on some shitty rigs, but I want so bad to get involved with the process on a scale larger than CPU mining.

The room sits at about 73 degrees 24 hours a day--We have to leave the AC on in that area, but in this room itself there's no one moving in and out, so I felt like the room wouldn't need help staying cooler than the persons room the set-up would come from.

Again I just don't want to lose money at the end of the day, it's not something I'm trying to make a sustainable income off. If I end up a few BTC the richer in a couple months, awesome, otherwise I'm mostly interested in the experience.

[sakkaku]

The thing with colocation services is that you are paying for:

- Backup generators, uninterrupted power supplies, etc
- Primary and backup cooling
- Fast network pipes

Those are all not necessary for mining.