Efficient Workshop Heating

[Russ BParticipant @russb]

My plans will appear here to build a heater, that covers its own electric bills – and in turn, pays for itself.

Sounds a bit like a holy grail of sorts, free heating??

– just thought I'd leave you pondering about that for a while – it's not an early April fools joke, and no….. I don't need sectioning, some of you might get what I'm about to do right away. It will take me a less than a day to build and setup, and I can get everything I need off ebay however knowledge is power here, and I also need to buy the components at the right price to get a reasonable ROI, if any.

There is an awful lot to consider, but without quoting numbers, it will draw from the mains, it will blow heat out, I will pay the electric bill as per usual, but it will make money by creating something of value. my particular plan, should consume around 800w, and pro rata I estimate it will cost under 20p a day, and as I value the heat output (others consider this a waste/problem) I can say I'm saving money by heating my workshop for sub £6.00 a month.

some variables,

the value of the product can increase and decrease

the difficulty to make a unit, increases constantly

the price of electric goes up

thus it might cost me £6 a month now, but £8 in 6 months time, £10 in 12 etc or tomorrow the value of a unit could halve, and then bill which was reduced by 90%, is suddenly only reduced by 45%…….

-figures quoted are just examples bar my current sub 20p estimate (14p actually but it varies by the second and I did that last night)…….

"" !! Fun !! ""

[Russ BParticipant @russb]

My plans to build a heater, that covers its own electric bill

[Involute CurveParticipant @involutecurve]

Heat pump?

[John Stevenson 1Participant @johnstevenson1]

I'm heating my workshop for zero and no electric used.

Mind you it could be a tad warmer in this weather.

[Russ BParticipant @russb]

It's a good consideration, a very good GSHP would deliver 3-4KW of heat for every 1KW input, so I'd have a 66-75% reduced heating bill, higher values can be achieved but a build cost / payback balance has to be stuck and gas is 50% cheaper than electric, and has a lower carbon foot print, so viewing from green or wallet perspective GSHP's are only 1/2 as good as they say they are if you have gas and a modern condenser boiler.

I'm aiming not for a reduction, but actually an offset.

I'll let the cat out of the bag tonight, but welcome more suggestions as a bit of fun.

The project will offset its own heating bill, my aim is 100%, I expect 99% and that will go down over time, even if it only offsets 50% of the bill, the components still have resale value for what they where originally intended and their value will barely change over the next 12 months, at which point, I'll upgrade them, to top up the efficiency if it's been worth it.

[Russ BParticipant @russb]

Posted by John Stevenson on 25/02/2014 12:01:58:

I'm heating my workshop for zero and no electric used.

 

Oil burner/wind solar?

Recycling old oil was always my plan, a friend of my brother runs his entire house on old engine oil and has done for 20 years or more, he gets the old oil free due his line of work. Last time I spoke to him, he was building a generator out of an old diesel engine for free electric (I say free, its costing oil, which just happens to be £0.00 for him)

Edit – another clue? this project can be built by anyone with an internet connection and mains electric (thats a massive clue)

 

 

Edited By Russ B on 25/02/2014 12:10:55

[Steven VineParticipant @stevenvine79904]

You could keep pigs in there. Feed them on scraps, get useful heat from them, Get them to breed, then kill eat and sell the parents, Use the droppings for insulation. Forgive me, I have not done the maths but it sounds like a plan.

[NJHParticipant @njh]

John

…….Taking an illicit tap from your neighbours heating system whilst they were away on their hols?

Norman

[Russ BParticipant @russb]

Posted by NJH on 25/02/2014 12:20:29:

John

…….Taking an illicit tap from your neighbours heating system whilst they were away on their hols?

Norman

your certainly closer than Involute Curve and Steve Vine!

it's all above board, people usually build these machines purely for profit they have hundereds of square metres dedicated to it in some buildings in china, the by product (heat) heats the building , and they target the lowest energy consumption possible – I'm targeting the highest energy consumption possible, while still being effective enough to generate enough "units" per month to pay the electric bill. As I said, as the difficulty increases I'll be losing out (unless the value per unit goes up…… then I'm ok)

I really want to let the cat out the bag, but I said I'll wait till tonight, so I'll keep waiting.

[Russ BParticipant @russb]

oh, and the system I build first off, will only have 2/3 modules quoted, so it will still hit around 99% cost offset, but for a measly 400-500w or so heat output – it should be enough to make a difference in there.

I'm building it like this as I already have some parts that "will do", I'll upgrade it to 3 or 4 modules after, but only if it works. (giving me a 750w-1000w heater)

Another clue? It's about 45cm heigh, and 28cm wide, with a depth of just under 50cm…..

[Dullard ArdParticipant @dullardard78275]

So let me get this straight this will be free or almost free energy ?

Can't wait to see what this is, roll on tonight.

Regards

Dull

[jason udallParticipant @jasonudall57142]

Did the arithmetic once for a gas( natural) powered generator…for 2kW..electric..you would burn gas at the equivalent electric price.. (gas board have already thought of this wease)..thus no profit there..but hold on..what about all that waste heat?..jolly d..free heating..
It turns out that
A)gas board or corgi or gas safe whatever the “club” is called.. wont let you build your own appliance and connect it to their gas.. ( fair enough I suppose)..
B) for me 2kW of electric is ample. .
At home…

[V8EngParticipant @v8eng]

Post removed by original poster.

Edited By V8Eng on 25/02/2014 13:32:04

[BazyleParticipant @bazyle]

But what do you do with the waste heat in summer? Hey we're owed a scortcher this year.
Funny how Iceland, with all its geothermal energy, farm servers instead of sheep which gives them excess heat so they have to use their cold streams to take it away instead of using it for district heating.
When I thought I could build a wind turbine without oppressive planning problems I was wondering how to use the summer excess to electrolytically refine copper and tin. From time to time it has been viable to recover tin from old cans this way but as the plating gets thinnner and electricity prices rise it has gone by the board.

So I just connect a 2 hp generator on the back end of my 1hp lathe spindle and get 1hp of free electricity whenever I'm running it. Simple. I use this spare energy and my internet connection to send emails out on behalf of my Nigerian cousin, Prince Akasombo, but so far this has not been much of an earner.

[jason udallParticipant @jasonudall57142]

Yep..”whisper gen chp”
Sole distrubuter is edf ( I think..certainly one of the power companies)….

[jason udallParticipant @jasonudall57142]

Yep..”whisper gen chp”
Sole distrubuter is edf ( I think..certainly one of the power companies)….

[BazyleParticipant @bazyle]

Posted by Russ B on 25/02/2014 12:07:04:

Edit – another clue? this project can be built by anyone with an internet connection and mains electric (thats a massive clue)

By the way if you are if you are running your internet porn server with my employer as ISP you will have to upgrade to a Business account. I might be able to get you a discount if I get free access – for test purposes of course.

[BikepeteParticipant @bikepete]

Is it mining Bitcoins or something similar?

[John Stevenson 1Participant @johnstevenson1]

Posted by Steven Vine on 25/02/2014 12:12:53:

You could keep pigs in there. Feed them on scraps, get useful heat from them, Get them to breed, then kill eat and sell the parents, Use the droppings for insulation. Forgive me, I have not done the maths but it sounds like a plan.

You can't feed pigs on scraps anymore.

Due to swine fever or mad cow disease or something.

My fire is a wood burner, neutral co2.

[Russ BParticipant @russb]

It's obviously not free or almost free energy Dull – its actually probably less efficient than a standard £30 oil filled radiator,

we have a winner

[Steven VineParticipant @stevenvine79904]

Posted by John Stevenson on 25/02/2014 13:39:42:

You can't feed pigs on scraps anymore.

Due to swine fever or mad cow disease or something.

My fire is a wood burner, neutral co2.

Well, that's animal husbandry crossed off the list (and I was going to change the idea to battery chickens as they can be stored away far more neatly).

John, check that themometer out, it could well be broken. It's been showing a constant 43.5 degrees in there for quite a while now.

Steve

[Russ BParticipant @russb]

Bikepete,

its is indeed a Cryptocurrency generator – but not Bitcoin, since that's all ASIC based now and regular end user hardware can no longer compete (not to mention they've just had hundreds of thousands of pounds hacked/stolen……)

I'm thinking Litecoin, since it specifically has "proof of work" so theses specialised ASIC machines can't take over – they add no value to the market, the only people who really made money where those selling the ASIC cards for $1000+ and now they've destroyed that makets value, they'll start work on the next, and when they finally figure out how to mine Litecoin via ASIC, I'll switch to something else since my hardware (unlike ASIC) won't be fixed to mining one code

– this is essentially cloud computing in reverse, end users, rent out their processing power for £££'s per successfully computed "block" – it's just not been commercialised yet, it wont be long before Google or someone takes this platform and makes real money out of it.

Back last year someone assesed the computing power of the BitCoin community, and if you took the top 500 super computers in the world, and merged their processing power together, the BitCoin community had 256 times more processing power……. imagine if we put that towards cancer research, in 2 days it could handle a workload that would take 2 years or so on the so called "super computers"

** edit, when I say real value, I mean directly paying out in $ or £, right now, they pay in "Litecoins" or "BitCoins" – and these can be sold and traded for real items, or just used as currency on some sites to buy things rather than PayPal or google wallet for example. 

Edited By Russ B on 25/02/2014 14:21:49

[Russ BParticipant @russb]

Ok, the components

Motherboard = Asus M5A78l-m/USB3 – because I have one in my loft, it has 2 PCIe lane, a x16, and an x1 which I will need a x1 to x16 ribbon + power supply to use – thus this system can handle 2 cards

CPU = AMD FX4100 – because I have one in my loft, I may disable 2 or 3 of its cores to save power (this won't be used due its very poor £ per watt ratio)

memory, 8gb of DDR3l (l = low power) – may drop to 1 or 2 gb, again to save power

PSU = 800w 90+ psu (this will need to be upgraded if I got for more than 3 cards)

GPGPU's doing all the work, and creating all the heat, will be AMD Radeon 6950's (just one or 2 to start with) as they're profit/energy consumption is just under 1:1 so they go cheap as the cryptocurrency community isn't interested in them anymore.

running CGminer from USB to further reduce power consumption (no hdd to run, no dvd, no wifi etc.)

the system with two cards will draw about 550-600w at the wall due to inefficiencies and the cards will put out around 400-440w of heat (1320 BTU/h) so over say a 100 hour period, they will cost £8 odd in electric and at the current exchange rate, those cards would create just under £9 in 100 hours.

any inefficiencies actually leave the system as heat anyway so worst case scenario, a litecoin has nill value, and I've just run a 500-600w heater for 100 hours, that I wanted to run anyway breaking even, but wasting time. the value of the hardware will not really go down at an alarming rate so it will be worth roughly what I paid for it should I decide to sell it and buy an oil radiator! – but the truth is Cryptocurrency does have genuine value so that statement in any worst case scenario is wrong, it will offset some of my bills,

A systems performance is measured in Kh/s (kilohash) this is a 900Kh/s setup (450 per card) with each card eating 220w of electric. A new card was released in the last week that generated 245Kh/s and uses just 60w (£105 a piece, and they will be sold out before they hit the shelves just because of that)

[Howard LewisParticipant @howardlewis46836]

Was Russ B speaking (writing) in tongues? As a fully paid up Luddite, I did not understand his last post. maybe the language was computerese.

Seriously, ANYTHING that oxidises a compound containing hydrogen or even just plain hydrogen, will invite the rust fairy to take up residence.

Any oxidation of hydrogen results in water, and even in vapour form, in the presence of oxygen, ferrous material starts turning to rust, or one of the other oxides of Iron.

So woodburners, paraffin (kerosene), or gas or oil heaters, keeping pigs, or chickens in there as a source of heat is out. Even human beings should be excluded, (no good standing there waiting for the shop to warm up to working temperature) since they exhale water vapour and evaporate water as perspiration.

So now you will need additional power to run the dehumidifier!

How about combining wind turbines and photovoltaic panels, (or even wave or tidal power – if you are near the sea / hydroelectric if on the banks of a river) to get low cost energy (Low cost ignoring the capital input)?

Lots of insulation is a good starting point, to retain whatever heat you can input to the shop, including heat from the motors and lights.

To offset the energy costs, make and sell something for which people are prepared to pay a silly price, and then try not to laugh too loudly as you go to the bank! But keep an eye on the market, and think up the next wheeze!

[Jeff DaymanParticipant @jeffdayman43397]

I think the OP likes the sound of his own voice. It would be a hell of a lot more straightforward to simply say – "hey, I could use the waste heat from a PC working as a shared server on the inet to help heat my workshop!"

Computer specs for servers change frequently so to publish a huge paragraph about specs is meaningless.

Or have I missed something clever?

JD

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