Water great idea! Bitcoin mining heats this swimming pool
A Bitcoiner has "pooled" off another mining innovation. The 'waste' heat generated by mining Bitcoin (BTC) is used to warm his swimming pool.
Bitcoin enthusiast Jonathan Yuan had kids who “love swimming, but the year before [he started using waste heat], they barely ever did it because it was always too cold for them.” Fortunately, he was interested in Bitcoin mining and understood that Bitcoin mining emits a lot of heat.
Yuan told Cointelegraph that he purchased a “heat exchanger and setup some ASICs,” (application-specific integrated circuits), and subsequently managed to keep “the pool above 90F all summer.”
The process works by immersion, which simultaneously cools the ASICs while "reclaiming that waste heat and putting it to practical applications such as heating living/working spaces, pools, or anything that could benefit from up to 60C/140F of heat."
However, “when the China ban happened” and the difficulty adjustment dropped, Yuan made a tricky decision. Do I mine less Bitcoin or turn the swimming pool into a bathtub?
The difficulty adjustment has since risen to new highs, and his kids are able to swim again. Plus, Yuan has “made money” mining and interestingly: “the best part is the pool acted 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 over a 24 hour period down to only 1F to 2F despite ambient temps swinging over 40F on some days.”
Based in Minnesota, the upper Midwestern United States, Yuan has kept the pool "toasty" even in cold temperatures:
-21F this morning here in Minnesota. The pool (blue line) is nice and toasty warm at 92F. pic.twitter.com/eq5b3OLFjV
Related: Gas heater broke down? I'll just
Read more on cointelegraph.com
