water great idea! Bitcoin mining is heating up that pool

Fry Electronics TeamApril 8, 2022
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water great idea! Bitcoin mining is heating up that pool

A bitcoiner has “pooled” another mining innovation. The “waste heat” generated from mining Bitcoin (BTC) is used to heat his swimming pool.

Bitcoin enthusiast Jonathan Yuan had kids who “love swimming but the year before [he started using waste heat]they hardly did it because it was always too cold for them.” Fortunately, he was interested in bitcoin mining and understood that bitcoin mining gives off a lot of heat.

Yuan told Cointelegraph that he bought a “heat exchanger and some ASICs” (application specific integrated circuits) and then managed to “keep the pool at 30C all summer long.”

The process works by immersion, which simultaneously cools the ASICs while “this waste heat is recovered and used for practical applications such as heating living/work spaces, pools or anything that could benefit from up to 60°C/140F of heat will”.

The submerged ASICs under the pool. Source: Bitcointv

However, “when the China ban happened” and the difficulty adjustment fell, Yuan made a tricky decision. Do I mine less bitcoin or turn the swimming pool into a bathtub?

“When [the] Difficulty fell like a stone, I actually pushed all of the ASICs to their limit which brought the pool temp to over 110F so the kids didn’t have to swim for about a month or two. lol. Yes, I had to say, “Sorry kids, the pool is too hot, you can’t swim today.”

Difficulty adjustment has since increased to new highs, and his children can swim again. Also, Yuan has “made money” from mining and interestingly, “The best part is that the pool acts as a perfect heat buffer.”

In fact, using bitcoin miners to heat his swimming pool is more effective than traditional methods: It keeps “temperature swings down to just 1F to 2F over a 24-hour period, despite ambient temperatures hovering over 40F on some days.”

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Yuan’s pool. Warm water from the bitcoin mining comes through the yellow hose. Source: Bitcointv

Based in Minnesota in the upper Midwest of the United States, Yuan has kept the pool “warm” even in cold temperatures:

Related: Gas heater broken? I’ll just heat my trailer with a bitcoin miner

Yuan recommends anyone who has a pool do the same, as it’s the “perfect application scenario” for waste heat. Now that his home mining setup has been running smoothly, Yuan is now building a pool-specific tank designed to flow pool water directly through the heat exchanger.

ASICs are now heating Yuan’s house and he has turned a passion project into a career. His bitcoin mining company, CoinHeated, is “dedicated to converting the waste heat from bitcoin miners into productive heat.”

The plan now is to bring pool heating projects to other homes and is in talks with “heat exchanger manufacturers who will be able to make something that will not corrode with the chemically treated pool water”.

Meanwhile, the kids can enjoy his swimming pool at home, heated courtesy of Proof of Work.