Super frustrated!!! Mining in the summer, yay.

[J_Dubbs]

Here I am in my new apartment, moved into a bigger & safer unit because I ended up having to fight and chase out a burglar from my old place at 4am one night- craziest thing that I've ever dealt with, thought I was dead, went mental on him best I could.

Anyways, now in the new place, higher up with more room, and my wife insists I use a spare bedroom for the mining gear. Great? Right? Well, not really. She seems less flexible than before about my mining arrangement, and she is nagging about the electric bill each month. Having my five Antminers and ten blades running in a confined space seems to amplify the heat, and the A/C here can't overpower it, major heat wave so cracking a window is just not gonna happen. So for whatever reason when mining equipment is turned on it seems to make our adjacent bedroom hot, and basically my wife is killing my hobby because I just can't listen to it (her tone about it= Ugh) anymore. I'm kinda pissed, very pissed, and yeah I came here to vent, really wish I could do something but don't see myself being able to run this stuff in a small urban apartment. Sucks because in our smaller apartment it was almost less of a heat issue, bit was still hot but the miners had more room to breath, and I was able to hook up a portable A/C without blowing a fuse. Now in a bigger place and mining is not allowed in the living room, apparently. Such bullshit the way this all went down, looks like I'll be selling some gear. And freaking BTC moving sideways for the past 6 months doesn't help either, at least with volatility I can sell her the idea of excitement, lately this is looking more like a savings account than speculative investing.

[goose20]

... "lately this is looking more like a savings account than speculative investing"


You are doing OK if its like a savings account. Many would argue mining at home is throwing money into a black hole these days.

[ljudotina]

My GPU's are doing just fine. Not having ALOT of them, but they all returned investment and are making me some money on top of it all day long. At the end i will just sell em to maximize profit and buy new / better ones.

[ABitNut]

My GPU's are doing just fine. Not having ALOT of them, but they all returned investment and are making me some money on top of it all day long. At the end i will just sell em to maximize profit and buy new / better ones.

Your GPUs are still earning you more than they cost to run? What GPUs are you using?

[ljudotina]

Of course they are! 280x and i'm planning to sell 1 by 1 and replace em with 290x
I'm not mining BTC directly for sure. I'm mining of multi algorithm mining site which is switching betwean not only best coins, but best algorithms.

[DrG]

J_Dubbs, I know how it is.  My wife was the same way.  It was more of an issue about time rather than heat in my case since GPU miners were not as stable as ASICs.

My wife makes 6 digits and yet she nagged me to sell Bitcoin at $5 in 2012 which I sold almost 1k coin - so imagine how I feel.

At the end of the day, I can always make more money as long as I have my health but I can't get buy a new wife.  Afterall the reason I want to make $ is for my family and not so much myself.

You might just have to bite the bullet and have them relocated to some cheap hosting site.

[Sickler]

I'm getting myself into a similar situation. 


I'm planning to start mining this coming week and I can already see heat being an issue. 


Hope you get the wife situation diffused. 

[Kimowa]

Find a way to reduce the heat, more air conditioner might be the way but it also depends on your electricity charges..

[DrG]

Find a way to reduce the heat, more air conditioner might be the way but it also depends on your electricity charges..

He's already blowing fuses on the circuit as it is.  Either he has to run more extension cords for 240V or has to do something other than AC.

[J_Dubbs]

J_Dubbs, I know how it is.  My wife was the same way.  It was more of an issue about time rather than heat in my case since GPU miners were not as stable as ASICs.

My wife makes 6 digits and yet she nagged me to sell Bitcoin at $5 in 2012 which I sold almost 1k coin - so imagine how I feel.

At the end of the day, I can always make more money as long as I have my health but I can't get buy a new wife.  Afterall the reason I want to make $ is for my family and not so much myself.

You might just have to bite the bullet and have them relocated to some cheap hosting site.

I was thinking someone out here must be in a similar situation. My wife suggested a storage unit or something my confusion is how to get a data connection on one. Do you have any examples of a hosting site? I've never looked into this.

Find a way to reduce the heat, more air conditioner might be the way but it also depends on your electricity charges..

He's already blowing fuses on the circuit as it is.  Either he has to run more extension cords for 240V or has to do something other than AC.

Yup on that. Thought about using a duct to force hot air out the window, but summer is crazy-hot out here and with the age of my equipment it's hard to justify time spent building something.

She was cool about it in the old apartment but now it seems like she was just bottling up her true feelings. I don't think she likes the heat and all the wires, add the electricity cost and she sees it as a pure expense. Extended sideways price action makes it a hard for me to convince her of any upside. Last month she asked if we could sell BTC each month to cover the electric bill; yeah we could but it defeats the purpose of what I am doing, which is in part and exchange where we both pay the electric company to build a steady position in BTC. I can't get her to regularly commit to an investment account, but she doesn't have much of a choice paying the electric bill. I remind her that we have enough BTC to pay for a trip to Europe, but she doesn't know how to use the wallets and shows no interest in learning, kinda think it's over her head and she seems to only ask "what if it ends up worth nothing?". Maybe she is practical, I think she is too conservative seeing that we don't have kids, but regardless it's clear our risk tolerance and comfort with speculating is much different. I'm okay with taking the chance, she wants to lock in proceeds to avoid seeing costs or losses. If I die I don't think she'd know how to turn my BTC into cash, or even access it in the first place, and yes I tried to teach her.

I see these Bitcoin women on Twitter, Perianne Boring and TheBitcoinWife, and I wish my spouse had their passion about BTC. Right now it seems like the economics of it are over her head, and she just feels the heat and sees the expense. I'm frustrated too because I had no idea that 5 ant miners and 10 blades would make the spare bedroom (office) feel like an oven! I thought it would be warm, but this is kinda crazy to have a room become unusable, and putting it out in the living room sounds like it will end in divorce. I married my best friend, we've known each other probably 15 years, and I'm even surprised at how she has reacted towards my mining hobby lately. I'm finishing a class right now and work is crazy, but basically in a week I will need to start selling stuff off. She asked me why I seemed mad and I told her that she is somewhat killing my $4,000 hobby right now with all her rules, and worst part is she really doesn't have any hobbies of her own.

This whole thing is the perfect example of "what starts out as fun, often becomes work, and eventually ends up as punishment."
Fun- first getting started, the excitement of Dec 2013 pricing action $1,200
Work- making detailed spreadsheets for my CPA for IRS tax filings
Punishment- wife has me in the doghouse over heat and expenses

Unless I can find new gear with much higher efficiency this might be the end of mining for me. Hoping the new Antminers will work without pissing her off.

[jjc326]

J_Dubbs, I know how it is.  My wife was the same way.  It was more of an issue about time rather than heat in my case since GPU miners were not as stable as ASICs.

My wife makes 6 digits and yet she nagged me to sell Bitcoin at $5 in 2012 which I sold almost 1k coin - so imagine how I feel.

At the end of the day, I can always make more money as long as I have my health but I can't get buy a new wife.  Afterall the reason I want to make $ is for my family and not so much myself.

You might just have to bite the bullet and have them relocated to some cheap hosting site.

Yeah I agree.  If your wife doesn't like it there's not much you can do.  You can try to justify it...perhaps tell her you'll use the mining funds to go on vacation with her or something?  Otherwise you're going to have to sell or move them somewhere else.  Sorry about the selling of 1k coin...the things we do for our family!

I'm even more interested in the story about beating off the attacker   did you yell and just flail at them, or pick something up to hit them with, etc.?  I'm always wondering what my reaction would be in a situation like that. 

[jonnybravo0311]

Cooling down the air in that small bedroom is not your answer.  The answer is in moving that hot air out of there.  Yes, it may be hot outside, but it's going to be hotter inside with all that gear generating tons of heat.  Put your gear on a shelf in front of the window.  Put fans to push air over the gear, then put fans to push that same air out of the window.  Even a couple of simple box fans from your local Wally World will be a better approach than trying to cool the room with AC.

If this is just a venting thread, then I get the "wife aggro" all the time.  "Those things are loud!", "The electric bill went up by $X!", "Which plugs can't I use now?!?"... and so on.  Sometimes she's fun with it like, "I'm sorry honey, I couldn't hear you over the racket those miners make.  Did you ask me something?" or "I wanted to dry my nail polish quickly, so I just held my hands in front of the miners."

[DrG]

You can't put them in a storage unit.  They would have the heat trapped and if they went up in smoke you may be liable for all the losses.

There's an option called colocation - basically you give the miners to somebody and they host them and pay electricity and housing - you give them a set amount per month or for a contracted time.  This is an good option if you feel you need to keep mining and they miners are pretty new (ie they will generate a lot more coin).  If they're near the end of life you should just try to find a local buyer and cut your losses.  A $20k divorce is more expensive than $4k mining loss.

For colocation there's a thread in this forum listing options - lots of people in WA state since power is cheap there.  Shipping to there will cost you so it may not be worth it.

As noted above you could try to move the miners to the window and force the hot air out - look at the mining rig pictures thread and get some ideas.

[Josepht]

You are saying that you have a lack of space, right? Why not sell 4 of them? This will create more space for the miners. Besides, the heat production will be reduced by 40%.

[J_Dubbs]

J_Dubbs, I know how it is.  My wife was the same way.  It was more of an issue about time rather than heat in my case since GPU miners were not as stable as ASICs.

My wife makes 6 digits and yet she nagged me to sell Bitcoin at $5 in 2012 which I sold almost 1k coin - so imagine how I feel.

At the end of the day, I can always make more money as long as I have my health but I can't get buy a new wife.  Afterall the reason I want to make $ is for my family and not so much myself.

You might just have to bite the bullet and have them relocated to some cheap hosting site.

Yeah I agree.  If your wife doesn't like it there's not much you can do.  You can try to justify it...perhaps tell her you'll use the mining funds to go on vacation with her or something?  Otherwise you're going to have to sell or move them somewhere else.  Sorry about the selling of 1k coin...the things we do for our family!

I'm even more interested in the story about beating off the attacker  did you yell and just flail at them, or pick something up to hit them with, etc.?  I'm always wondering what my reaction would be in a situation like that.  

To answer the attacker thing... It's insane how much I was able to calculate in such a short amount of time. Giving the detailed version because it was pretty freaking crazy.

Our old apartment was tiny, thought I heard a noise but wasn't certain. Almost was going to roll over and sleep more but something in my gut told me to check it out, as if more light was coming from the doorway, but I don't think he had a flashlight so it might have been my adrenaline kicking on early. I didn't want to wake my wife up grabbing a weapon, like most people we have something and a plan, which I found out only matters if you stick to the drill every time. Anyways, I thought it was my dog or a miner just making some noise, or maybe I forgot to turn something off. I went to bed at 3:15am and it was now 3:45, was thinking I would walk out into the living room and settle my paranoid insomniac mind so that I could get a few hours of sleep before work.

One bedroom apartment, roughly 700 sq feet, the moment I exited the bedroom I could see the outline of a guy. He was almost right in front of me, the only thing between us was a HoneyWell floor fan, the tall kind. I had empty hands and was wearing only shorts. All my mining equipment has green lights, and those are what made him visible to me. He was black, with a black shirt, black shorts, black socks, and black sneakers. I saw him maybe a second or half a second before he saw me. My first glance was total disbelief. As I came out the bedroom I thought I saw a guy, and in my head it was questions escalating to alarms, "is that a guy? A guy? It's a guy? IT'S A GUY! IT'S A GUY!! IT'S A GUY!!!". Thought about turning around to get my thing that I always planned on having, but wasn't sure if he saw me, and I was unwilling to take the risk of showing him my back or leading him into the bedroom door. Goal 1 was keep him out of the bedroom, goal 2 was get him out, goal 3 was don't get hurt.

Keep in mind the small size here, my bedroom door was one or two feet behind me, and the intruder was 3 feet in front of me, with my desk behind him, the entire room maybe 12-14 feet wide. My empty hands and I noticed the fan in between us. Suddenly I thought of an old Bas Rutten self defense video from a few years ago, "always use an object" - I figured if he had a gun, then I was probably dead anyways, and if he had a knife, or a needle in his pocket, then I need to not use my hands. I grabbed the fan while playing the scene from The Departed in my head, the one where Leo Dicaprio uses a coat post to beat down the mob guys from Providence in the convenience store. All this stuff playing in my head, all these thoughts, the fan seemed long and like a good weapon to break on him before reverting to using hands and risking injury, knock him over the coffee table and stand over him just like Dicaprio did to the guy in the movie, don't stop until he stops moving; all this shit playing in my head over a max of 2 seconds time.

I stepped out of the bedroom, alarms in my head, he saw me and we both paused for half a second. He made a noise "huh!", I spooked him. Somehow the fan was in my hands, almost unconsciously or automatically in one motion I had picked it up and had it over my shoulder with the base pointed forward, the plug was directly in the wall and didn't snag at all. "FUCK YOU!" and I used it like a spear, jamming him as hard as I could in the face, "FUCK YOU!" again jamming him as he tried to block and run out the way he came. Got him twice good, maybe a third time in the back of the head, but learned that you cannot kill someone easily with a standing fan base. My idea of knocking him over the coffee table didn't happen either, but due to the small space it almost happened. The moment he saw me, or the moment I had my first strike with the fan he was in retreat mode, and I ushered him by essentially standing my ground and pushing a few feet forward. No clue if I would have been a victim had I handled it any differently, all I know is I went completely nuts and I don't think he expected it at all. Distance to the patio door he came in was only 14 feet or so, and as he was leaving I took the entire fan and threw it at him, breaking a bunch of vertical blinds and making a ton of noise. I went to the door he just ran out of, yelled "fuck you" a few more times, I was so angry! I felt violated but also pissed off that he scared the shit out of me!

My wife came out and there I was in my trashed living room. The whole thing lasted 20 seconds at the most. She told me my eyes were out of the sockets and I was pale as I frantically told her "there was a fucking GUY inside the LIVING ROOM!!!" I was worried she wouldn't believe me, until when detectives arrived and she noticed her cash and cigarettes were removed from her purse. Then I noticed my Hong Kong Dollars and Euros were taken out of my wallet and only my USD was missing. To sort through my wallet and her purse would have taken some time, my guess is the guy was inside for at least 5 minutes. The apartment was two rooms and we slept with the bedroom door open, almost certain he must have peeked in on us sleeping, and if he was a killer we would have been dead. Our patio had a 12 foot wall but because the building is on a hill there is a way up, which requires going to the lowest point and walking across the top of the wall past the neighbors apartments. My friends would always say how amazing our patio was, but I would always mention my security concern, to which most would reassure me I was being paranoid. We moved into a temporary unit the next day and never slept in the old apartment again. We had left the slider with just the screen door because it was an exceptionally cool night and our building is on an old chiller system, meaning on cool nights we don't have any cold air blowing from the vents, nor do we have full thermostat control. Our building is kinda outdated and add in the HVAC system with the mining gear and leaving the patio as a screen door that night made sense, but I never thought anyone would have the balls to actually come inside while we were sleeping. It was crazy, thankful it was not worse. Whole thing was 20 seconds and I lost my voice for 2 full days after from the yelling.

[J_Dubbs]

You can't put them in a storage unit.  They would have the heat trapped and if they went up in smoke you may be liable for all the losses.

There's an option called colocation - basically you give the miners to somebody and they host them and pay electricity and housing - you give them a set amount per month or for a contracted time.  This is an good option if you feel you need to keep mining and they miners are pretty new (ie they will generate a lot more coin).  If they're near the end of life you should just try to find a local buyer and cut your losses.  A $20k divorce is more expensive than $4k mining loss.

For colocation there's a thread in this forum listing options - lots of people in WA state since power is cheap there.  Shipping to there will cost you so it may not be worth it.

As noted above you could try to move the miners to the window and force the hot air out - look at the mining rig pictures thread and get some ideas.

The good news is selling my gear and with the coin mined even at current trading values I think I'm still profitable, won't know for sure until I update all my books. It does suck though to have all this time tied up into this and now have this unexpected configuration issue. Other problem is the breakers in the new apartment are arranged different, basically more rooms but the same amount of breakers, leads to my wife's blow dryer in her bathroom shutting off half the mining room. Because the building is weird the only window in the room is a hatch-style one at floor level, with my dog being around I don't want to take the risk of having him take a 10-story drop, building something safe would probably cost more than the revenue can justify. Good thing I guess is I won't lose my shirt on anything, bad part is I hate selling crap like this on eBay, just a pain in the ass and it never sells for as much as I hope.

You are saying that you have a lack of space, right? Why not sell 4 of them? This will create more space for the miners. Besides, the heat production will be reduced by 40%.

Yes, I think I will sell off everything and maybe get 3 of the new Antminers that just came out. I noticed shutting off the blades helps a lot, and for the electricity they use it might be best for me to sell those fast and cheap.

[bitcoinbelieve]

Underclock your antminers. That is what I did today (since I got my S3). It makes dramatic difference with heat, noise, decrease wattage and last importantly limited usage of AC.

[DrG]

Well post on here the city you're in and maybe somebody would be willing to host them.  You could also sell them in the marketplace here, which when combined with escrow, is a lot safer than using eBay/Paypal.  I figure people on eBay would buy your gear, mine for 25 days, and then say it's broken and ask for a refund and make you pay for shipping both ways - that's how eBay works.

Again if your power costs are above $0.10 it may be worth it if you do buy new S3s to have them hosted in WA state.  Sure you have to pay for hosting but then you don't have to pay for electricity and the wife is happy - it may be a better solution.

[BitcoinHeroes]

Underclock your antminers. That is what I did today (since I got my S3). It makes dramatic difference with heat, noise, decrease wattage and last importantly limited usage of AC.

That is a good way to reduce heat and electricity but it also reduce profit by a lot..

[_Miracle]

Undervolt https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=526060.0
AND
add a second fan pulling air out of the back (it reduces noise/heat)

 ...I used these http://smile.amazon.com/gp/product/B0026ZPFCK/ref=oh_details_o05_s00_i01?ie=UTF8&psc=1 because they were pretty & could be bought with bitcoin 




or

sell your Miners and upgrade to the S3's, get out of mining and keep the coin?

Tell your wife about Gyft. She can save 3% on purchases.