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Years ago when mining with a single gaming card was more common and viable, I lived in a rented room in a house owned by a live-in landlord who controlled the h
by dreen 6y ago
Years ago when mining with a single gaming card was more common and viable, I lived in a rented room in a house owned by a live-in landlord who controlled the heating, and wouldn't turn it on for very long in the winter. Since electricity was included in my (fixed) rent, I was able to keep my room a few degrees higher than the rest of the house.
However I must point out that you shouldn't do this in most circumstances, there are environmentally friendly ways of heating your house.
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- celticninja 6y agoI mean the OP found an environmentally friendly and economic way of heating his house.
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- berdario 6y agoI'm in a similar situation, and I'm just using an electric heater... No fancy mining setup. But I'm also thinking, maybe actually this is for the better? (Not only for the stingy landlord, but for the environment). I mean, even if a heat pump is much better than an electric heater... Having to heat up only the rooms that need it, instead of kitchen, bathrooms, living room (plus the rooms of other flatmates who might not be bothered) might actually use up less energy total, than using a more efficient mechanism, which otoh would be used for the whole home.
- cjrp 6y agoI'm not sure if they're common where you are, but this is what Thermostatic Radiator Valves are used for. You can set an approximate room temperature, and the valve will open/close based on that. There are also smart ones now which can have a schedule applied to them, e.g. don't heat my bedroom during the day.
- dreen 6y agoDespite my precarious housing situation at the time, I also own a big house in the country over 150 years old. The main form of heating it originally were 2m tall ceramic furnaces, always placed so that they could heat two rooms at the time. You put material to burn in from either side, and after getting hot the furnace would keep heating the room for hours, and all it takes is a few logs of wood (that you later have to regrow anyway). I wonder how many bitcoins is that in term of environmental impact.
- jiofih 6y ago0.5kg of CO2 per kWh is the average for electric grids around the world. 1kg of wood produces around 2kg of CO2, every 400g of firewood gives you 1 kWh, so 0.8kg CO2/kWh. That’s slightly worse than mining. Bitcoin is wasteful in its total energy consumption which is not reused, but 99% of the power you put into that GPU will be released as heat.
- mrkstu 6y agoDifference being if he’s using wood he’s recycling that carbon over infinitely as long as it isn’t from old growth forests.
- lostlogin 6y agoThe wood I use was going to a landfill, so does using aircon actually equate to more CO2 in the atmosphere if I just let it get dumped and turn on the aircon?
- adrianmonk 6y agoThe concept makes sense, but I'm not sure the numbers work out. Heat pumps are pretty efficient, something like 300 to 400%. Are you really going to use less than 25 to 33% of your living area and also not provide any heat at all to the other areas? Also, with forced air heat pumps, you can usually adjust the registers (air vents) to reduce the flow of air to unused rooms.
- dmos62 6y ago> However I must point out that you shouldn't do this in most circumstances, there are environmentally friendly ways of heating your house. What aspect do you think could be friendlier to the environment? Rare metals and production emissions in high tech electronics? Or the fact that it's using electricity (as opposed to more isolation)?
- IgorPartola 6y agoYour electricity likely comes from burning coal. Coal pollutes quite badly. Other ways to heat a dwelling are more efficient. For example natural gas heaters burn cleaner and energy losses are much smaller compared to all the conversion losses (by the time you produce a BTU of heat from electricity, several BTUs of energy have been lost due to conversion losses, while burning gas is much closer to perfect efficiency though obviously not perfectly efficient). Or if you can use co-generation, you essentially produce no noticeable environmental impact at all. Or you could go the other route and invest in insulation or a molten salt wall for passive heating.
- dmos62 6y agoBut electricity isn't inherently dirty, right? It's probably better to have the network shift to greener sources than have every consumer do that individually.
- IgorPartola 6y agoRight. If you use solar panels you are definitely better off. The question is whether you are or not and for the time being most places still don’t use renewable energy sources.
- dreen 6y agoApart from what others mentioned, proper insulation is the best way to keep your house warm, it is missing from many houses.
- arnaudsm 6y agoIn countries like France [1], electricity heating is the most environmentally friendly, at 40 g Co2/kWh, while gas (the cheapest and most common) is >250. [1] https://www.electricitymap.org/map https://www.electricitymap.org/map
- adrianN 6y agoEven in France a heat pump will give you at least twice the heat for the gram of CO2.
- arnaudsm 6y agoHeat pumps need energy to operate. Hence at low temperatures the best combo is electricity+heat-pump. So cryptomining+heat-pump is exactly the same, minus the e-waste.
- simias 6y agoDon't heat pumps work like a fridge/AC but backwards? That is, compressing the air inside to generate heat, then decompressing it outside where it gets extremely cold and is warmed up by the relatively hotter outside air? If so I fail to see how cryptomining features in there.
- arnaudsm 6y agoYou're right, the compression step is mechanical. Heat pumps are the most carbon efficient after ~0°C. So in most parts of the globe electrical heat-pumps are the most environment-friendly. Thanks I Edited my first comment.
- b15h0p 6y agoYes they do. They usually have classic resistive heating elements for when the outside temperatures drop too low for the heatpump to be efficient.
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