Pretty much decided on using the garage to house the miners. Keeps it out of the house and won't increase the cooling cost.
A couple concerns are temperature, humidity, and dust. I'm in Louisiana and the summer months' average high temperature is 90F (32 C). We also have to fight humidity which can reach over 90% in the evenings.
I've seen a lot of open-air concepts and I appreciate the simplicity, but I'm wondering if that's really an option for me.
I've thought about building a box/cabinet for my miners instead. At first I will have three Avalon 741s. I plan on expanding in the future, but for now I only need enough room for these three.
Options:
- Open Air Rack
- Construct a new box
- Use an old ice chest/cooler and modify
The idea I like the most right now is the Ice chest/Cooler. I have a couple older ones in the garage that are big enough to house all three miners. I've read that minimizing the unused space around your miners helps keep the temperature down.
It would be very easy to modify the coolers to allow for ventilation through a filter and reduce/eliminate the dust that can be introduced into the miners. I actually have a stock air box for my 2013 V6 Accord that I could use. The Filters would be cheap, high-quality, and obviously allow plenty of air flow. The air box would also help cut-down on the noise. For the exhaust I'm thinking of running a flexible duct up into the attic. The coolers are double-walled, so I also have the option of filling the void with sound insulation to further reduce the noise.
I'm hoping this would also reduce the miners' exposure to humidity. I thought of adding desiccant on the inside of the cooler, but I'm guessing that the volume of air I'd be moving would make that pointless.
My final question for you guys is why does everyone set their miners down horizontally? Why not mount the miners vertically so the fans are blowing the hot air up, where hot air wants to go anyways (exhaust duct would be at the top, parallel with the air-flow)? It seems like mounting vertically would give at least some kind of reduction in the energy required to move the air across the miners. Even if it's 0.5% - 1.0%, it would be a power reduction (e.g., cost reduction) that doesn't require any investment or upkeep to achieve.
Still at the brainstorming phase and have plenty of time to decide what to do. Canaan.io has my order, but I haven't received any of the payment info yet... Hoping to have everything done with mining started by November.
