Personal question: How old is your computer?

[freebeard]

...with one reviewer calling the device "a danger to my family" and saying the family is now on its third unit: "The first one overheated to the point of melting the wire. On the second one, it still heats up a lot and the wire has deteriorated at the connections on the adapter side as well as the magnetic-connection side.

Never had that problem with my 128/512K machine.

Originally Posted by Isaac Zachary

Also where to put it as 4ft of snow is possible.

In the ground. Water-to-water-to-air heat exchangers.

[redpoint5]

If they can get wood for free, that's the way to go.

[JSH]

Originally Posted by Isaac Zachary

I often wonder if my parents should go with heat pumps.

They heat off of wood and propane. Last time I checked, the price of propane was similar to electricity.

But there is the initial cost.

Also where to put it as 4ft of snow is possible.

And there's the question of how effective it will be here with some of the coldest temperatures in all of Colorado, and even in the USA. But my theory is we only get super bitter cold for a certain number of weeks. The rest of the year heat pumps should help.

My current heat pump is a SEER 24 unit that will deliver full rated BTU down to 0F and reduced heat down to -22F. So that should likely cover most days but you may need to supplement with some wood.

If you get 4 feet of snow you put the outside unit more than 4 feet off the ground. Wall based mounting is typical in most of the world - I'm not sure why we mount most of ours on the ground in the USA.

[Isaac Zachary]

Originally Posted by redpoint5

If they can get wood for free, that's the way to go.

Sadly no. You'd think with all the dead forests they'd be paying people to clear them. I might actually go help some friends tomorrow who are fleeing from a forest fire south of here.

Originally Posted by JSH

My current heat pump is a SEER 24 unit that will deliver full rated BTU down to 0F and reduced heat down to -22F. So that should likely cover most days but you may need to supplement with some wood.

If you get 4 feet of snow you put the outside unit more than 4 feet off the ground. Wall based mounting is typical in most of the world - I'm not sure why we mount most of ours on the ground in the USA.

There are days where it can get as low as -40°F. I guess I'd have to research what heat pumps would keep the home from freezing in a worse case scenario. There have got to be heat pump units that switch to resistance heat when it's too cold for the heat pump to opperate.

I had never heard of wall mounted heat pump unit. Thanks!

[redpoint5]

Wood has always been free around here for those willing to put in the muscle, which is why I ask.

No problem clearing snow around a heat pump with a shovel. Now if it dumps 2 ft overnight that might create problems, but here in the Oregon valley snow's no problem.

[Postal268]

Originally Posted by Xist

Linus Tech Tips had a video about mining instead of running your heater.

Is it as effective as electric heaters? They say those are 100% effective, yet natural gas is supposed to be much cheaper.

sorry if this ends up here twice, I never saw it post so trying again

So with the bitcoin mining basically the heat is waste energy from the work of mining so I'm essentially increasing the computers efficiency by harnessing the waste energy from the pc. That's why I don't mine outside of the winter months cause then I'd be spending electricity to remove the waste heat making it double wasteful. They certainly don't produce as much heat as a space heater cause not all of the energy is going towards heat. However you run them non-stop 24 hours a day so over time one gaming PC can warm an entire room, given slower than a space heater. Space heater is like flooring the pedal to get up to speed and a miner is like slowly accelerating to a certain point. Now different GPU's will generate more heat than others depending on how efficient they are for mining. My RX580 (which has dedicated gaming or mining modes) was making more than the other two cards combined however it also generated the least amount of heat. Depending on the size of a room and how much heat each GPU makes you'll need 1-2 GPU's per room. Maybe more for a large living room. I only ran 3 and it worked pretty good if I shut the spare bedroom door and let that room just be cold. My house is about 730sqft. It would be a hefty upfront investment to get started so I'm glad I just had some good enough GPU's sitting around to test it out this winter. I'll have to look into Linus's video about it.

I will say I did push it a bit further than some people dealing with the house being 65 degrees for a few weeks before I finally kicked my heat on and just playing VR sword fighting anytime I got cold so I'd stay warm lol

Space heaters are considered 100% efficient cause electrical waste is heat so using it for heat just make the losses also heat for your house. By that perspective I am sure I was getting close to 100% efficiency with the miners since I added multiple functions for them to serve.

Technology connections did a good video on space heaters (I'd post links but I can't on this site yet) name of the video is Space Heater Nonsense

However the amount of heat you get for the amount of energy you put in with a space heater is less than a heat pump as you mentioned technology connections has a bunch of videos on it

Instead of using the electricity to create heat the pump just transfers the heat from one place to another. It's efficiency though depends on the temperature differences but it can in a lot of cases heat your home more for less power since it's not creating the heat but syphoning it from somewhere else.

In my opinion bitcoin mining is even better cause A if your GPU is good enough you are earning more than you are spending in electricity and then B you can recycle waste heat to further increase it's efficiency. I was only making like $3-$2 a day profit but I saved a lot on my heat bill. However I didn't sell that bitcoin so I'm probably down a lot now with the current crash but I'll just hold it till it goes back up.

I hope by next winter we will have rebounded from the shortage and I can actually get some modern GPU's since all of mine are 5+ years old.

Now for the summer months I am trying Technology Connections cold battery idea again I can't post links but name of the video is (Batteries aren't the only way to store energy. Here's another.)

His idea is get the house really cold while electricity is cheap so it takes longer for the house to heat up. Making your home into a cold battery. I took it a step further by opening all my windows at night while it's in the 60's and setting up fans to circulate the air. I have a smart thermostat too so it tells me how much my AC runs and what time of day and one day this week I got the hotter half of my house down to 68 degrees (only half the house has windows that open, my house is a Frankenstein like my car and half the house was built decades before the other) from windows being down and my AC only had to run for 4 mins that day while it was 84 outside and my insulation sucks with my old ass house. However I checked my local power rates and found that my rate basically doubles from 2pm-6pm so I set my thermostat schedule to turn the AC up to 84 during those hours but luckily it doesn't actually heat up to that temp during that period so it's just like turning the thermostat off but still having it going just in case cause I'd never want it to go higher than that.

[Isaac Zachary]

Originally Posted by redpoint5

Wood has always been free around here for those willing to put in the muscle, which is why I ask.

No problem clearing snow around a heat pump with a shovel. Now if it dumps 2 ft overnight that might create problems, but here in the Oregon valley snow's no problem.

Unless a good friend who doesn't have a wood burning stove is clearing trees off of his property, here you have to both pay for a wood permit and put in the muscle to get the wood. Every summer my dad goes and pays for his permit, then takes his little pickup, trailer and chain saw out to the forest and cuts up all the wood he needs, comes back and chops it all by hand, and stacks it up, then goes and gets another load, and he does this until he has enough wood for the winter which can take him several weeks even though that's all he does since he's retired.

I'm not sure how wood compares to propane or electricity in price, especially if you factor in all the work involved as well as tools and fuel. But wood can't be left on if you leave your house, especially for several days. And although it would be best to heat tape and insulate every inch of pipe including sewer pipes, the benefit of a central forced air system is it gets heat under the house where it keeps things from freezing, which is something wood stoves just can't do usually. Plus my parents aren't getting any younger and one day Dad will have to stop cutting down trees out in the forest with no cell signal by himself.

[Postal268]

Originally Posted by Isaac Zachary

Unless a good friend who doesn't have a wood burning stove is clearing trees off of his property, here you have to both pay for a wood permit and put in the muscle to get the wood. Every summer my dad goes and pays for his permit, then takes his little pickup, trailer and chain saw out to the forest and cuts up all the wood he needs, comes back and chops it all by hand, and stacks it up, then goes and gets another load, and he does this until he has enough wood for the winter which can take him several weeks even though that's all he does since he's retired.

I'm not sure how wood compares to propane or electricity in price, especially if you factor in all the work involved as well as tools and fuel. But wood can't be left on if you leave your house, especially for several days. And although it would be best to heat tape and insulate every inch of pipe including sewer pipes, the benefit of a central forced air system is it gets heat under the house where it keeps things from freezing, which is something wood stoves just can't do usually. Plus my parents aren't getting any younger and one day Dad will have to stop cutting down trees out in the forest with no cell signal by himself.

That sounds rough, I was considering getting a wood burning stove before I got diagnosed with Carpal Tunnel and the doctor told me cutting wood with a chainsaw or axe would certainly make it worse. Mine wasn't age related though, just work related so after getting new work and taking steps to aid recovery it's "better" now. Still hurts to use a computer long term and manual car doesn't help but either way I totally get not being able to put in the work for wood. I live in the woods and there are loads of downed trees I could go get free even just around my yard or a minute walk into the woods and it's still a lot of work.

[redpoint5]

Wood is cheapest after all the sweat, but I certainly wouldn't use it, but only because I have access to natural gas, which is cheap and easy.

If I didn't have access to natural gas, I'd probably install a heat pump and use that most of the time, supplementing with wood on the coldest days. Simply running the air handler would distribute the heat from the fireplace.

My only interest in wood fires these days is around a fire pit. Don't get me wrong, I have fond memories as a kid chopping and stacking wood, building a fire, and falling asleep in the only warm part of the house. Ain't nobody got time for that anymore.

[freebeard]

Can't hoard natural gas?

My brother heats his house (built in 1867) with wood pellets.

I have a bug out bag with a wood pellet lantern/cook stove and a zip-lock bag of pellets.

Have you seen the smokless fire pits based on a rocket stove design?