Until next season!

[pandemonium]

Hey all,

I jumped back into DC this past winter season to utilize intelligent heating and it worked pretty well. It was able to maintain my living room at a decent temperature (though, was a bit chilly if outside temperatures were below 35°F and required supplemental heating). Since the cold season is likely done and things are starting to warm up to constant A/C use, I will unfortunately need to stop my personal production...until next season!

I admire all of you that devote the time, money, and effort to help contribute and some of you really do a lot. It's really inspiring, as a community, and as a promotion towards citizen sciencing. Keep up the good work and best of luck to all of you with your goals and adventures!

 

[TennesseeTony]

Much appreciated, the comments and the crunching!

Please do poke your head in to check on us on occasion.

 

[Orange Kid]

Thanks for your contributions.
Do stop by when you can.

 

[TennesseeTony]

There is one grueling future challenge you may wish to participate in, despite it not making economical sense, and that is the Pentathlon event. It is expected to be held from May 5th to May 19th. If you have hair, it may cause you to pull it out, it is so much....uhm...fun. This event is similar to the Olympics, the World Series, the World Cup, the SuperBowl, March Madness....you get the picture...no other (BOINC) challenges really matter, in comparison (my opinion, at least in regards to reputation), and the TeAm will really need all the help it can get! It is a combination of CPU and GPU, 5 projects over two weeks, with some projects overlapping, and the toughest of competitors.

 

[pandemonium]

I'll certainly give it consideration! Thanks.

 

[ericlp]

Would be interesting if anyone has used DC machines to exhaust into the main heating system in a home. I wonder if there is someway you could do AC with DC heat waste. Probably not hot enough to heat water for a shower but... would be interesting!

 

[Ken g6]

Would be interesting if anyone has used DC machines to exhaust into the main heating system in a home.

@petrusbroder used to do that.

I wonder if there is someway you could do AC with DC heat waste. Probably not hot enough to heat water for a shower but... would be interesting!

Yeah, probably not hot enough for either.

 

[petrusbroder]

Would be interesting if anyone has used DC machines to exhaust into the main heating system in a home. I wonder if there is someway you could do AC with DC heat waste. Probably not hot enough to heat water for a shower but... would be interesting!

I did that when I was living in northern Sweden - no need for AC there ...
The heating was in two parts: one part was a geothermal heat extractor (very common in Sweden) the other were my computers (I had 21 computers with power generating CPUs and a total of 24 GPUs at that time). I collected all the hot air using a big hood and a powerful fan and ran the hot air in in insulated air duct to an heat exchanger in the attic. That heat exchanger heated the incoming air which then was piped to the different rooms and on top of that, it heated the hot water. If the temperature outside was above -10ºC that system generated sufficient to keep the rooms at 21ºC. If the out side temperature was above 0ºC the system generated approximately 40% of all the warm water needed for 2 adults and 6 teenagers ... Below 0ºC the geothermal system kicked in for the hot water and below -10ºC it also helped with the heating of the rooms.
The system was approximately 75-80% efficient, i.e. I reused approximately 4800-5200 KWh/month of the 6800 KWh/month the computers used. Best efficiency was at out side temperatures between 0 and -10ºC, if it was warmer much of the heat was not used (on the other hand: all other heating was not used either so there was no cost), below -10ºC the geothermal system kicked in ... The net energy cost of running 21 computers was less than 180 USD.
Why we did this? Several reasons: 1. the infra structure existed (i.ex. the ventilation channels were already built in, we had a big house (375 square meters = approx 4300 sq.feet) and there was sufficient insulated space in the attic for the system. Thus the investment was not too big. 2. I wanted to use the energy efficiently - in spite of electric power being inexpensive in northern Sweden (9 cents/KWh including all taxes, fees and transmission costs) and 3. i wanted to know if it was feasible to do. The pay-back time turned out to be 6.5 years (measured, not estimated!) and we lived in the for 7 years ... It also served as an experiment - when i had constructed the system, and built it and it worked, a HAC-company became interested and put in quite a few sensors in the house and the system and they learned a lot. When we sold the house the new owner built a utility room with washer, dryer, freezers and some other stuff and continued the system ...