GM, I took the first shower with water heated by a Bitcoin miner this morning. Up until that shower, the bitcoin mining hot water heater was just another appliance that mines Bitcoin but after the shower, I started getting really stoked! A hot water heater that pays Bitcoin! Unbelievable how powerful Bitcoin mining is.
#bitcoin #bitcoinmining #homesteading #plebminer #homemining
Boiling oceans! 🫡🐸
GM
Getting paid #bitcoin to shower is the new flex
Looking forward to seeing how this was implemented.
It's very makeshift at the moment, but now that I know it works I'll fasten a few things down and take some pictures.
It pays to be clean.
Getting cold here so just hooked up miners to the heat pump. Getting paid and house is warmer 👊
Need deets my dawg
Now I'm wondering what temperature water a shower needs, what temperatures are safe for a mining chip, and how much hotter is the chip than the shower water it heats
In other words, will this result in excessive equipment failures from overheating because you're trying to use it for hot water instead of just warm air?
You’re a legend! I’ve got to see this…
Adventures in heating water with a Bitcoin miner
https://v.nostr.build/kRBrsoMNes5flVCR.mp4
I've been working on my own version of a Bitcoin mining hot water heater over the past few weeks, taking lots of inspiration from many fellow plebs who already have working setups. When it comes to Bitcoin mining heat applications at home, there is rarely a cost effective plug and play solution. I find myself building my own diy solutions but that often comes with some trial and error. Here is nostr:nprofile1qqsdt2hwqafxd3fn5nyf9rucka8c3qy6w72fru4fva0xyh596mxtt6qpz9mhxue69uhkummnw3ezuamfdejj778nygn amazing setup:
nostr:nevent1qqszhyu6mrkr8vjcw8teaha5jqnyxfw6k5g3p57pszhqtwav3yd8gyc37t8al
If you haven't seen it already, my first experiment in immersion mining was to preheat maple sap using mostly equipment and components I already had plus some canola oil for the dielectric fluid.
nostr:nevent1qqszjqlg2g0h65rd968y0sjsu9tfmuahg6j5gcg43yexd099efsdjyqydfsau
Taking that experience along with the favorable prices of the s19 miners, I decided to see if I could build something to heat all the hot water at the homestead.
I always approach the design of my systems utilizing permaculture to guide me which often means my initial implementations look makeshift and messy.
There are a few key principles I'm leaning on in this hot water heater build. First is small and slow solutions, I want the hot water heater to be able to function normally if things don't work out, I want to have a minimal investment in the components for the same reason. This leads to the principles produce no waste and use/value renewable resources, basically I wanted to use stuff I already had. Using heat productively from Bitcoin mining naturally utilizes the integrate rather than segregate permaculture principle.
The design utilizes the side arm recirculation technique, which takes cold water out of the drain port of the tank and returns heated water to the top of the tank through the pressure relief port. The recirculation loop of the hot water tank is driven by a cheap pump through a plate heat exchanger.
On the Bitcoin mining side of the hot water system, an s19 is placed vertically in a 10 gallon plastic cooler immersed in 8 gallons of canola oil. There are two fans in the intake side of the miner at the bottom of the cooler and I tried to keep the control board and PSU out of the oil (less to clean up if it didn't work). There is some pex pipe drawing hot oil off the top of the tank driven by an identical pump as the hot water side of the loop. The hot oil passes through the plate heat exchanger in an opposing flow as the water. The cooled oil is returned to the bottom of the cooler through the hole where the water spigot was.
I've done a few initial trials of the system and it works! However, the biggest downside is that after heavy water usage like drawing a bath, it takes a few hours for the water to get back up to the top temperature. I think the slow recovery time is due to the size of the plate heat exchanger. The miner can put out heat more quickly than it can be exchanged into the water so I'm finding I have to keep the miner running at a lower wattage to avoid overheating.
I'm currently using the 220v circuit to power a miner to heat the house so I have to modify the power supply of the hot water system to run on 110v before I can continue dialing it in. In the meantime, I could resist sharing my progress.
#permaculture #homesteading #permies #meshtadel #bitcoin #bitcoinmining #plebminer #homemining
