Everything is ready up to the point of where it can be until I receive the manifolds and fittings. I’m holding off on anymore plumbing and osb/plywood because I want to have these things in hand before making those decisions.
One thing I will be working on is adding an on/off switch for each fan on the dry cooler. This is the original drycooler I have from the beginning of this whole project. It has two single speed fans with no switches other than the breaker. I did test to see if I could kill the fans and passively cool the miners in 20 degree weather. That is a negative. I will break the fans apart and put each on their own switch on the side of the dry cooler itself. This way I can have two fans on, one fan, or no fans. This whole time, since it has gotten cooler, I def could have gotten by with just a single fan on.
Some exciting stuff! The manifolds showed up today and they look beautiful!
I also split out the fans on the dry cooler. I am able to turn them on/off individually. That was kind of a pain due to the wires for the fans being so small and they were a bit shorter than I thought so I had to make them longer. Running one fan is still only allowing the oil to have about 25C outlet temps during the day!
Even with only one fan on the dry cooler running, the miners are still VERY cool. last night was in the teens and about 24F right now. Either variable speed fans or I think hi/low and individually controlled fans is essential if you’re in a climate that gets “cold”. I’m still waiting on some fittings to continue on with getting the heat reclamation aspect “activated”.
I did get the wall prepped with plywood. I’ll probably try and work out the details on wiring the fans to a traditional switch for the hanging hydronic heaters.
Not a whole lot happening at the moment, HOWEVER fittings should be here this week or next. They have actually shipped! With a bit of luck I may be pushing fluid right around the new year.
Finally a fun update! At least I think so. I got the fittings from Fog Hashing last week!!! Their help in sourcing these parts was an absolute immense help and I know they definitely went out of their way to do this. It was definitely above and beyond what I ever would have expected.
I’m still dry fitting things to fit the way I’d like. Going from drawing to actual can be more thoughtful than one would think given space and organization. I definitely have some tweaking/changes to do. Luckily, I was able to get the manifolds up on the wall without having to mess with the expansion tank so the miners can keep on mining. Eventually I’ll have to pull the expansion tank off the wall and support it so I can finish up the plumbing.
I’ve got some minor parts coming and some more teflon and “pipe dope”. I’ll be at mostly a gridlock until that shows up. Most of it should be here this Friday.
I would have like to have mounted the manifolds a little lower, but the heat exchanger for the garage is right above where I’m taking the photo (you can see an outlet at the top of photo) and I would liketo have that inlet/outlet basically go directly to the manifolds. This was the best way to do it that I could think of and utilize pex still and make it look decent. The next iteration could definitely see me doing some copper on the wall, who knows. I’ll just have to see where this goes.
Do not fret! I have not forgotten about ya’ll! It’s been mostly waiting for tiny odds and ends to get in and having to order parts a couple times from supplyhouse. I’m working on actually fitting everything for final fitment/sealing. Pex is all ran and I’ll be able to crimp it soon, as the last step. Barring some sort of part oversight, I should be able to get this thing going early next week (a few days). I forgot to order a particular pex fitting. I didn’t want to go brass, it just would have bugged me since it is basically all SS. lol. Late next week we are suppose to have ambient temps down to about 10-15F during the day as our highs and -10F at night. No better time than to just throw everything we’ve got at it to see how it does. I’ll upload some new photos next week!
I’m designing on own single unit tank, and just wondering even though the miner is fully submerged, is there any benefit to having air flow between the top of the fluid and the lid? For example if I had 2 X 4 inch ducts in the lid, one with a dust filter and one with a small quiet 4 inch exhaust fan, is that beneficial? Like if it’s air tight and there’s no air flow can it get stagnant and go bad? Cheers
I don’t see any issues at all with there being a lid that doesn’t really allow much air in/out. I prefer this actually due to protecting the oil from dust contamination or other things that could crawl or fall in. Just think of how much dust builds up on surfaces in your home. That would otherwise be in your oil and you wouldn’t notice it. Having a decent lid was one of my original requirements. If it were “air tight” I think the only concern would be that air expands and contracts as it heats/cools. Again, I doubt you’re creating an airtight chamber where there would be any issue.
I wouldn’t put any kind of fan to blow air through/by the oil. I suppose if you did add a filter, but the oil is so expensive that I would just leave it and keep out as much dust/contaminants as possible.
@ShredZ The other aspect that I just thought of would be the increased exposure to humidity. I would think the effect of humidity would be amplified by constantly running “fresh air” through the tank like that.
It makes me wonder if one could use a water separator and run the oil through it as part of the system. Similar to maybe something found in the marine world or some diesel engines.
I shared another video on another thread today and my design is similar to that except it’s 3D printed, pump takes the fluid to a heat exchanger that’s also connected to a water cooled radiator, and pumps back down underneath the miner. Only thing I have left to do with the design is put in 1/4 BSP female threads and then I can print it. Only thing that concerns me is my 3D printer can only do 300mm X 300mm X 400mm which is the size of my design but one side the miner is 290mm and so I’ve made the space for that 292mm when I’d prefer to make it an extra 12mm thick. I’ve got everything except for the heat exchanger and Bitcool fluid so I’ll test with water first without the miner and a different pump/pipes so I don’t leave any water. I’ll share when I make progress
If I get it to work the perks are the tank itself would cost $20 and the heat exchanger would cost $280 (so $300 aud = $200 usd)
A 12kw radiator costs $450 usd so you could immersion cool a single unit for $650, but I reckon you could daisy chain the heat exchangers to one 12kw radiator and do 2 miners for $850.
I was quoted $2200 usd for a single miner tank plus dry cooler because shipping is so expensive, fingers crossed I can get this to work
That’s awesome. Are you using ABS for your print material? I may recommend going 1/2" for one miner instead of 1/4. I believe you should prob shoot for no less than 3GPM through the miner and probably no more than 5GPM. Equal distribution is key here, so your flow plate really is HUGE in the design. One thing I played around with was taking a garden hose (mine put out about 5gpm) and I create a flow design and tested it with a couple styles and patterns. Granted my setups are made by the manufacturer, but I was curious. You can see in a setup like this that if you have too many holes and there is no positive pressure under the flow plate then flow drops off in areas of the flow plate (typically right in front of the oil input.
Yeah I was going to use ABS mate but I realised my printer isn’t big enough I have those quick connect nozzles for the hoses I was going to use with the pump which I thought was 1/4 but it’s 3/8, the pump does 12L a minute. I’ll put pictures of the tank design in this post but I don’t have a flow plate designed yet, I’ll put a female thread in the bottom of the tank so I can design something for even distribution and screw it in. I’ll have to buy a new printer to do this which would be $600 and I’ll have 3 3D printers
Very nice. Are you using PLA? I think it has issues with the oil. I spoke with someone that built an immersion setup with some pla and I believe he switched to abs
I’m thinking I can currently 3D print a mock-up that would only be 300mm high and 280mm wide just to test the flow, the base where I have the 15mm pipe running, I think I should make it open space under the entire miner, and then every 10mm have a hole say 2mm diameter going into the miner for even distribution, then I can test and see how well that goes and test the water speed to make sure it’s pushing 12L/min out of the base for best performance which might be trial and error for making the holes bigger. What do you think? Sorry to high Jack your thread when I get somewhere I’ll make a new thread and share the files
After many hours yesterday, a power outage, later downed internet, and a monstrous mess of water/glycol I have finally “activated the system”. We had a pretty bad wind storm while I was working on the system.
It is heating my outbuilding very nicely. Running the pex underground results in roughly an extra 5F drop by the time it comes back. Plenty good for me. It is maintaining the house temp with current ambient temps around 28-30F. I’m still trying to dial some stuff in and I’m on data overload right now as I watch and monitor things.
The oil temp is floating around 40-43C.
If I activate the garage heater it cools the oil down to the mid 30s.
I have only used “low fan speed” on the hanging heaters.
This is mostly preliminary information as I’m basically on data overload at the moment as I watch things.
It is currently -10F here. The miners are providing a good amount of heat to my home (2600 sqft) and maintaining a temp of 55 in my outbuilding/office (800sqft). I hooked up the fan on the hanging hydronic heater to a sonoff plug with custom firmware and it is controlled in nodered and set to turn on at 55F. I am collecting temp data through a esp32 temp sensor.
I am supplementing heat in the home with a pellet stove because with the reclamation in the home and the location of the exchanger in the furnace I can either use reclamation or not because the furnace being on would heat the water in the exchanger. I was not able to feasibly put it in the location I really wanted. This would have been before other heating elements and after the air filter. The supplemental heat at this temp is absolutely necessary. There are only two ways I could maybe not use supplemental heat. I could either have a larger heat exchanger in the furnace (I have the largest that would fit) or I could increase the immersion oil bath temps. With the current setup the exchanger in the furnace nearly cools the oil enough to maintain 46C and lower. I could also add more miners as “flex miners” to provide more heat when needed by turning them on based on a set of parameters. This would likely be older miners that are cheaper that I would really only use in certain scenarios.
We rarely ever get this cold here. Most of the time we are right around 32F. The reclamation will work really well during 95% of the cold months. Even now it is still saving me a lot of $$ in heat because I would have to be running electric coil heat in my furnace as it is toooooo cold for the heat pump to either work for any amount of time or to provide any meaningful heat.
I have also moved two miners over to braiins since they have gone to FPPS. I have been wanting to utilize custom firmware. I want to see how they do on braiins, both in terms of error rates and rewards. If they do well then after 7-10 days of data I will move all miners to braiins and probably flash one or two. With their software I can have much better control over some aspects and perhaps get rid of the issues that two miners have that hash at lower rates when the oil temps are warmer with chip level tuning. I also have looked into the UMC ePic boards as well. They’re about $150 and there is no miner dev fee. This could end up being a wash after a year or two, but the owner at altair says the board and software is definitely his favorite between all custom firmware options. He was saying he doesn’t like luxOS that much and braiins and vnish are comparable with vnish being a little better choice because it stores presets and doesn’t have to autotune from scratch on a reboot. That seems like an obvious thing to have, but who knows.
I will provide some pics and perhaps a little video explanation once I get get the space cleaned up. I should also be ordering a automatic glycol makeup “system”. This way I can hang it on the wall, put a few gallons in it and hook it up to the system and if the pressure drops a little due to a small leak then it pumps fluid into the system to get it back up to the set pressure. This will be very nice to help keep tabs on things and provide a little buffer if there is actually a small leak. Currently, I have NO leaks.
On all glycol side threads I used the blue monster ptfe tape (5-6 wraps) and hercules megaloc. The megaloc is compatible with basically all pipe materials AND propylene glycol.
I will say that my first impression of the reclamation system is, I absolutely love it and I may be addicted to the concept! I almost immediately hopped on FB marketplace to see if I could score a deal on the next phase. I have found what I need, but just need the individual to get back to me.
Just ordered up some power monitoring for the main feed to the immersion tank. I really want to start tracking this so I can get some data on oil temps vs power consumption and also if there is any kind of power difference between different pools. I’m not sure if it will read the line voltage, so I suppose we will see.
It was between this and the emporium. The emporium is cleaner and it can utilize power within the breaker panel which is super nice. HOWEVER, I have read that people like this unit better as it is more accurate.
I will integrate the unit into home assistant where data will be logged in influxdb and graphed with grafana. HA makes this way to easy for this unit. I can also easily pull any kind of data into node-red for any kind of “flow” I want to create based on the data. I hope to have this going by the end of next week. Now if BTC would go up in price so I can pay for all this s***. ha
I also hope to get temps on oil input and hopefully run a graph tracking delta T.
I have those quick connect nozzles for the hoses I was going to use with the pump which I thought was 1/4 but it’s 3/8, the pump does 12L a minute. I’ll put pictures of the tank design in this post but I don’t have a flow plate designed yet, I’ll put a female thread in the bottom of the tank so I can design something for even distribution and screw it in. I’ll have to buy a new printer to do this which would be $600 and I’ll have 3 3D printers 
