Last year I used a quiet version (new fans on low speed) of an S9 to heat a large bathroom in our house. It worked so well I was inspired to take it up a notch and heat the main room of our house with an S19JPro for this winter.
I've had this running for two weeks now and I'm blown away with how well it works. Our house is older and uses primarily electric baseboards for heat through the winter. This is an ideal situation to replace with a bitcoin miner, no matter what your kW/hr cost for electricity is. The biggest improvement to our house has been increased air flow. Baseboards just sit there and radiate, the miner is moving a ton of air, and our house is noticeably fresher with no window condensation.
Anyway, here's the set up and a few issues that I had to solve along the way.
Total cost to set this up was pretty much exactly $2000 CANADIAN - under $1500 USD, and you could probably do it cheaper if you're in the States, given shipping to Canada on a couple items is not exactly cheap.
S19JPro AC Infinity 8" duct fan Ducting WiFi->Ethernet bridge 240v wiring set up (I had an extra one in the house already) Filters and box Floor register
I was able to build this set up in our basement crawl space, then duct the hot air through the floor to the main room.
Intake and filters: I used a filter box, which has 3 x 4" air intakes. One from outside for fresh air, and two return air ducts that pull from separate rooms. I did not think I would need 3 intakes, but was very surprised how much restriction there was when only using two. By the time you put filters in there as well I was having to crank the AC infinity fan quite high just to get enough air flowing.
Cutting a hole in your floor for the register - this was the one part that almost made me NOT go through with this. I did not want to cut a massive hole in my floor without knowing for sure if this would even work. In the end it was easy and looks great...and thankfully it's an awesome change in the way we heat our house.
Cost/benefit: We've replaced two 1000 watt baseboard heaters with the S19JPro that we run at 2000 watts (~70 TH/sec) It's an equal swap as far as electricity use is concerned - but we now earn about 0.00005 BTC per day, which in my area offsets about 90% of the electric cost. Plus, like I mentioned, forced air heat is sooooo much better than radiant.
Sound: In order to keep the chips under 80*C I have to keep the fan running at speed 4 (of 10). This is pretty quiet even right beside it, but we don't hear it at all from the basement. What we do hear is the air coming out of the register. Speed 5 is just loud enough to be a bit of an annoying background noise. Something we weren't stoked on living with. 4 though, it's much quieter and not annoying, but you can definitely still hear air coming out. I think once we get to freezing temperatures outside, I might even be able to bump the fan speed down to 3. Maybe.
I'm also still running the S9 in the bathroom. Which is obviously not nearly as efficient, but it's still 'worth it' vs running the alternative wall mounted space heater.
Here's a few pics of the filter box, infinity fan, and the register on the main floor of our house.
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Fantastic! I am not living in such an area where it's too cold still when I'll set up mining this post will help. Thank you so much.
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fantastic!
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nice, where did you get S19JPros? I'm assuming this will be long term cost recovery.... them "heaters" are still expensive :-)
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42 sats \ 1 reply \ @Ice9 OP 21 Oct
I got it off ebay from seller "secondhandgpus". Sounded like it was from a mining operation in Quebec that folded, or was liquidating stock. $1,046 Canadian including shipping. But yes, multi year cost recovery. I can run it as heat from Mid October - Mid April - so about 6 months. Call it $4.50 Canadian/day so make $800 or so for the 6 months at current BTC prices. Maybe we get a BTC price bump so MIGHT break even after two years. However - we wanted to buy a heat pump or some other forced air style heating system anyway which is MUCH more expensive to set up. Easily 4 x more expensive if you go high end. Probably cheaper to run, but my thought was the extra cost savings which I keep in Bitcoin have a chance of appreciating over the next decade. Tough to weigh all the options and potential outcomes.
All said, I'm confident this was the right choice from a long term financial view point. We might have been better off in 10 years just leaving the baseboards and keeping the $2000 in BTC - but it's quite amazing the difference forced air over radiant heat is making. It's worth whatever that ends up costing.
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0 sats \ 0 replies \ @nym 21 Oct
I've been thinking about setting something like this up also. Thanks for much for the detailed information.
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awesome, thanks for posting!
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Awesome job.. Thanks for taking the leap on the floor hole and for the excellent write-up. In the push for electrification we should start to see more modular pieces of such a setup enter the market.
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It feels so good hearing your home with miners. I use a couple s9s turned way down so they are almost silent. It isn't much but it costs as much electricity, and works great.
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You live in the desert, right? Don't you overheat your house with the miners?
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Nice! I fully agree. I just put a little filter box on the back of my S9 setup this year as well. Aiming to clean the air a bit as it flows through. So far so good...though I did have to up the fan speed a notch in order to pull through the filters and keep the chips as cool as they were before.
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Holy!
Nice job! Thanks for sharing
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won't it shorten the life of the miner if it always runs hot?
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21 sats \ 1 reply \ @Ice9 OP 21 Oct
From my understanding anything under 80c isn't a big deal for a long term load. If your main goal is to mine bitcoin for profit, it is for sure more economical to keep the chips cooler. As in, you'll consume less electricity for a given TH. But, my main goal is to heat my house so I need the chips to be warm. When the chips are at 75-80c, I get an outlet air temperature of 50C, and by the time it vents in to my house it's at 35-40C. That keeps a main floor living space at about low 20c when it's 0-10 outside. My point being, I don't want to keep the chips cooler and I'm fairly certain any long term lifespan loss is negligible. Check back in a few years and I'll tell you. Haha.
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75 C is hot! Not boiling but still hot
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Great work. Inspiring!
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