My small (but growing) mining farm

[krisgt30]

Some of you may know, I used to have my machines remotely hosted years ago. This was basically because the cost of power in Connecticut is the third highest in America. I knew I was moving to Michigan so in January of 2018 I started looking for a perfect facility. This ended up being one of the hardest parts as industrial rental properties were far too large and too high of rent, and the commercial spaces lacked the appropriate power.

I ended up finding a hybrid space in April which was perfect. The front has an office and the back is about 1000sq ft of garage space, with 25 feet high ceilings and an overall length and width of roughly 50'x15'. I have room for roughly 2000 miners given the high ceilings. The problem was the current panel was only 200amps with mostly 120v, so I had to spend a decent amount getting another 200amp panel installed full of 3 phase 230v breakers.

So my current setup consists of 24-120v outlets on 20amp breakers and 12-230v outlets on 20amp breakers. I started off with 19-S9s and 6-T9s. Now I am utilizing pdu's to expand before having to expand with another 400amp panel. I already have the local electric company coming next week to provide a site survey for my transformer upgrade. Reason being, once I hit 55 machines I will be at max capacity.

Now I have acquired 10 more s9s and 1 z9, and hope to acquire another 10 in the next few weeks. Being 25 feet tall ceilings I came across a new challenge. The extensive height of the ceilings made the hot air pool up at the metal roof and come down like a thick fog drowning the miners in heat. So the solution was a 30000cfm upblast exhaust fan in the roof and mesh holes in the garage door for air suction in. I am still building and had to spend a lot of time fixing cosmetics, but here are my machines as they stand now. Attached is the video of the space after I installed the fan (still working on cosmetics as a construction company was here previously and left it in pretty rough shape).

https://youtu.be/cxmjioInNq0

Attached is a picture of the expansion occurring.



Questions, comments, recommendations certainly welcome. (Yes those plastic racks will go in favor of the black and the cabling will get sorted once my electrician comes and tells me what can/cannot be done and where.

[mikeywith]

Good job bro, i hope you will be able to ROI , looks like a lot of money is spent on setting up the farm aside from the cost of asics and psus, as for the cooling, since you have that much space and relatively a small number of machines, try to keep a distance between them, that will help in keeping both temps and fans low.

[krisgt30]

Good job bro, i hope you will be able to ROI , looks like a lot of money is spent on setting up the farm aside from the cost of asics and psus, as for the cooling, since you have that much space and relatively a small number of machines, try to keep a distance between them, that will help in keeping both temps and fans low.

Thanks, luckily industrial power is pretty inexpensive here so I can still maintain profitability. I will give the spacing a shot come spring time I’ll just need to invest in some extension cords for that.

[Norm MacDonald]

I don't want to be a jerk but there is so much wrong with that setup, I don't know where to start. You're blowing hot exhaust against a dead wall space, it's then deflecting and rising into your electric connections, (They don't like Heat) Coiling and furling back up over and around, back into your intakes, ( more heat )' You have no defined intake and exhaust to create clean airflow over your Chip sets. It's analogous to putting your units in their own self heating oven. If you can create a smaller well defined pathway of air intake through the units and a channeled defined exhaust out, you will be better off. Ideally you will want to control the "living space" of the units so they are living in a roughly -5 CFM pressure so the exhaust is slightly pulling air flow into your intakes. Good luck.

[krisgt30]

Did you take a look at the video to look at the airflow? I have four 6000 cfm fans blowing air into the machines. 2 additional at the garage door drawing fresh air in and a 30000cfm upbast exhaust fan in the roof sucking the hot air out. This alone has made the ambient temp 10 degrees Fahrenheit lower than any temps outside. I will have to shut off the exhaust fan in the dead f winter so the miners don’t get too cold as they are already mining in the 50s right now. Project over the winter will be to create a hood over the exhaust side of all my racks hooked up to the upblast fan to suck all the exhaust straight out in the spring/summer.

[OgNasty]

Great job!  I too was curious about the airflow situation, but you would know better than we would what the temps around those power connections are.  I imagine where you're located, overheating is less of an issue this time of year, so it seems like you'll have plenty of time to get some ducting in place, or whatever you choose to use.

[krisgt30]

Great job!  I too was curious about the airflow situation, but you would know better than we would what the temps around those power connections are.  I imagine where you're located, overheating is less of an issue this time of year, so it seems like you'll have plenty of time to get some ducting in place, or whatever you choose to use.

Thank you. I’m more than willing to bet Norm didn’t bother looking at the video. I modified my response with my findings. Before moving to this facility, generating the proper airflow with industrial fans was more than sufficient in small spaces. However with a ceiling height as mentioned, the fans on the ground didn’t cut it, neither did a 50000 btu ac. I tried ducting with in-line fans but if you connected more than 3 miners to the same duct you would get back pressure. Rather than continue that route with expensive inline fans I just went with the biggest bang for the buck suction fan I could find. This thing is so powerful it is very turbulent inside the facility. Any loose paper or plastic or wrapping in the facility either gets sucked right up into the inlet fans of the miners or swirls around in a circular motion on the floor past the miners.

[ricecooker]

Why are you still hogging S9's when new generations of MUCH more efficient miners are already rolling out? How in the world are you going to roi with all those money spent building infrastructure for s9's t9's possibly mining at a loss, or at most pennies a day?

[krisgt30]

Because they are profitable for me. Not worth paying four times the price of one for a mediocre upgrade. I will wait until a worthy upgrade comes along to make the jump.

[ricecooker]

Well I mean you can call pennies a day profitable, but is it really worth the huge upfront costs? I'm genuinely curious how you do the numbers because I have lost a lot of money mining with asics, notably the inno d9, which I'll never roi because of the insane upgrade the upcoming whatsminer d1 will do. So I'm thinking of only mining bitcoin from now on...

[Norm MacDonald]

You are correct I did not see the video. Apologies. Best of luck.

[krisgt30]

Well I mean you can call pennies a day profitable, but is it really worth the huge upfront costs? I'm genuinely curious how you do the numbers because I have lost a lot of money mining with asics, notably the inno d9, which I'll never roi because of the insane upgrade the upcoming whatsminer d1 will do. So I'm thinking of only mining bitcoin from now on...

I’m landing second hand s9s for $250 shipped including psus and I’m at .067kwh moving to a new contract of .04kwh. Just because you make pennies a day off of s9s doesn’t mean everyone else does.

[MoparMiningLLC]

I’m landing second hand s9s for $250 shipped including psus and I’m at .067kwh moving to a new contract of .04kwh. Just because you make pennies a day off of s9s doesn’t mean everyone else does.

nice electricity price! I wish our industrial electricity was cheaper here - my electric company told me commercial and residential rates are the same. I have an acre of property adjacent to my homes property. Currently trying to get the electric company to install a transformer - If I can get that, I want to put up a decent size building and fill it with miners - both mine and as a co-location service to others. So, when I see people such as yourself doing this, it provides more encouragement to get mine going and off the ground. Mine is still smaller than yours but its getting larger - which is why I really need to expand to the adjacent property. anyways, keep up the good work and keep us posted on your progress!

[krisgt30]

Yes I am lucky in that the region of Michigan that I am in has three tiers for pricing, 30000kwh gets you into industrial pricing at .067. The state is also deregulated for electricity so I am working with a consultant to try and land a fixed price of .03-.04 with a third party supplier.

[mikeywith]

Thanks, luckily industrial power is pretty inexpensive here so I can still maintain profitability. I will give the spacing a shot come spring time I’ll just need to invest in some extension cords for that.

you are right, spacing them will surely cost you more in cables and cords, there is however a better solution , should you face heat problems. what you can do is to quarantine/isolate the intake fans from the exhaust fans.

something like this >https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lbFmhigZ81s

This will give you a much lower temps, as the hot air will be isolated, allowing more time for your exhaust fans to handle the hot air without the miners sucking back any of that hot air back.

i have tried this personally and it helps a lot, i used 12mm MDF to isolate , it was a stupid idea as i faced a lot of issuing in digging those squares to fit the fans, but i have access to almost free MDF sheets and they are perfect for heat isolation so i used them, but you can use just about anything cheap.

[krisgt30]

I do have excess plywood lying around from delivery of my upblast fan and what was lying around in the space as I took the lease over. I was hesitant to do that because my concern was the potential of a fire hazard having the wood snug against these hot miners. Maybe if I spray some flame retardant on it I can use it as the dividers you recommend and give that a shot.

[ricecooker]

I’m landing second hand s9s for $250 shipped including psus and I’m at .067kwh moving to a new contract of .04kwh. Just because you make pennies a day off of s9s doesn’t mean everyone else does.

Ok, a dollar a day then? 250 days just to break even miner cost, assuming difficulty stays the same and miners don't break down (second hand units with no warranty). Not to mention the upfront costs to setup the infrastructure, aren't we talking about years to break even assuming all things sail smoothly that is. That is still a huge risk. I'm not here to argue, just here for insight, so chill out.

[krisgt30]

Ok, a dollar a day then? 250 days just to break even miner cost, assuming difficulty stays the same and miners don't break down (second hand units with no warranty). Not to mention the upfront costs to setup the infrastructure, aren't we talking about years to break even assuming all things sail smoothly that is. That is still a huge risk. I'm not here to argue, just here for insight, so chill out.

I did not realize I had any sort of tone in my previous post. I’m sorry if that upset you. You are making a lot of assumptions with your calculations. I’ve learned a lot of lessons mining from 2015. One of them for me is, not to sell just because everyone else is. Again I will reiterate, Until I see a unit  that makes a huge enough change to make me switch I will do it.

[Norm MacDonald]

I’m landing second hand s9s for $250 shipped including psus and I’m at .067kwh moving to a new contract of .04kwh. Just because you make pennies a day off of s9s doesn’t mean everyone else does.

Be patient. Soon, you will be buying Brand New S9i's in the box WITH AP3++ PSU's for less than that. There is a virtual Tsunami of Brand new S9i's and S9j's hitting the secondary market. LOTS of Colo's are losing customers and their miner stock piles are sitting on the floors. Not to mention ensuing 7nm technology at our doorstep. I would go so far as to say, that some large Farms are already taking delivery, or are soon, of large blocks of the new tech from Bitmain. Legacy Technology is about to get VERY cheap.

[krisgt30]

I believe it will be a while before we see 7nm chips utilizing its full efficiency. Everything we are seeing is because of the arms race to rush and get products out. Theoretically a 7nm chip should provide miners with double the efficiency of an s9. These new models aren’t coming close.