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Category: Support
Forum: BOINC Agent Support
Thread: B-HERP - "The House of Boinc", CPU heat recycling idea's to cut down costs. |
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Thread Status: Active Total posts in this thread: 10
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BE04642
Advanced Cruncher Belgium Joined: Dec 14, 2004 Post Count: 59 Status: Offline Project Badges: 
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Hello all fellow crunchers.
----------------------------------------This thread is a spinoff of Guide for best crunching?. Since some of us seem to have a small datacenter at home producing a lot of heat while crunching, how do you recycle/use this heat? I like the idea of "courine": "I re-use the heat from my machines by back flowing a heater vent. Since the heater here is convective and has no fan, the fan that pumps the heat away actually improves the heaters performance beyond the pre-heating the machines put out. In the summer, I duct the heat outside so not to fight the thermal sink in the front room. The sink is just a 2" copper pipe that goes about 35' straight down. It has a pump to move the water cooling in the pipe past a pair of small car radiators that sandwich a box fan. This makes it so I don’t need an air conditioner even on the hottest of days for only 85W. So part of going green is learning to use less power and get more out of it by design. Like using the heat from the back of your fridge to preheat outside air into the kitchen, or vent it away in the summer. Reducing the effect the oven has on this efficiency battle." Myself, I'm using the heat to warm our floor, the main heatsources are in the basement, it keeps the cold water at a comfy temp since they are nearby the ventilators pusing out the heat from the 2 Q6600's and use it to dry the wood for our stove. I really like the idea of setting up a watercooled circuit with a radiator in our living room, but it would require a pump - and more electricity - to push the water 6 meters around - up to the radiator and back to the CPU - at a decent flow. I don't think that simple convection will do. So how about our own "B-HERP"-project? (Boinc Heat Energy Recycling Project) Any idea's are welcome but should be: A) cheap - low on materials and energy - B) practical C) easy to implement D) good looking and with an excellent WHAF-factor (Wife/Husband Acceptance Factor) Idea's? Post them here. Thank you all.   |
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courine
Master Cruncher Capt., Team In2My.Net Cmd. HQ: San Francisco Joined: Apr 26, 2007 Post Count: 1794 Status: Offline Project Badges: 
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Its 8' of pvc to 20' of copper, straight down. (I forgot, it was 2 - 10' copper sections, not 8'. So the hole needs be 30'+) The water pushes down through an interior 1/2" pvc tube and slowly rises against the copper. This makes the loop about 60' and can drop the water to about 50F under no load. The air running by the radiators add the load as the room temp increases, but the water doesn’t seem to go up much. I even turned the heater on to get the room to 100F. Turned it on full blast and the water never got above 60F.
----------------------------------------It's not fast like an air conditioner, but it gets the job done if you turn it on before the day heats up, for a 900 sq.ft lower flat in my neck of the woods. If you liquid cool, you just need to plug in.  But the other side of this that you can pre-warm the air before heating in winter if it get much below 40F outside. You have to exchange the air if you well insulate. So if you use this concept to pre-heat the entrance air before an air exit heat exchanger, you can drop your heating cost dramaticly and still not have to suffer from stale air all winter long.     [Edit 1 times, last edit by courine at Feb 4, 2009 5:42:26 AM] |
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courine
Master Cruncher Capt., Team In2My.Net Cmd. HQ: San Francisco Joined: Apr 26, 2007 Post Count: 1794 Status: Offline Project Badges:
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BE,
----------------------------------------What kind of place you live in? I have many more ideas that I havent explored. Ones your wife would really love. |
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twilyth
Master Cruncher US Joined: Mar 30, 2007 Post Count: 2130 Status: Offline Project Badges: 
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BE - you really wanted to call the thread BERP didn't you? You can tell us.
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Jack007
Master Cruncher CANADA Joined: Feb 25, 2005 Post Count: 1604 Status: Offline Project Badges: 
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My current use is completely low tech nothing required. I'm currently not working but my wife works, so while she's not home i turn the heat off, and live in the study that the 2 computers heat up quite nicely. saves tremendously on the heat bill.... The summer scares me though so any ideas on venting heat outside are welcome.
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twilyth
Master Cruncher US Joined: Mar 30, 2007 Post Count: 2130 Status: Offline Project Badges:
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If you water cool your machines, then you can mount the radiators outside of a window, but I've never seen the advantage of water cooling. You can get better temperatures, but they're not so much better than high end air cooling as to make all of the additional problems worth it. But that's just my opinion.
----------------------------------------For air cooled systems, the only practical option is to ventilate the area they happen to be in. Or you can try Courine's idea of pulling cool water from the ground, using that to cool the study and then pumping it back out in a loop. However whether or not it is easy to do depends on your local geoology. Where I have, it's all hard shale. I've seen backhoes grinding their teeth on the rock until they smoke. The easiest thing to do would be to close up the study and put in 2 fans - one intake and one exhaust. But fans use electricity too. Plus the ambient temps will be higher so you will have to roll back any overclocking - at least partially. I plan to move all of my rigs into the basement. It will let me close the one heating vent I leave open down there in the winter. In the summer, it won't contribute to the heat load of the central A/C. Even on the hottest days, the basement rarely gets above 75 degrees Fahrenheit. |
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BE04642
Advanced Cruncher Belgium Joined: Dec 14, 2004 Post Count: 59 Status: Offline Project Badges:
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No, I didn't. Being honest here! And Why should it be called BERP
---------------------------------------- Looks more like a disease eh? Oh, that's a typical case of B-HERP B-HERP: Boinc - Heat Energy Recycling Project BE - you really wanted to call the thread BERP didn't you? You can tell us. |
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BE04642
Advanced Cruncher Belgium Joined: Dec 14, 2004 Post Count: 59 Status: Offline Project Badges:
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Well it's a quite standard home, for Belgian standards, with a basement divided into 3 segments - 2 smaller with ventilation openings that are connected to the larger one with the stairs to the ground floor -, nothing much in this basement besides 2 Q6600's, cold water pipes and wood that is drying out for our stove (besides central heating).
----------------------------------------Ground floor consists of 4 assymetricely interconnected spaces - entrance is 5th space with 2nd toilet, space for shoes etc -, 6th space is for the central heating boiler and storage. (5th and 6th are separated by a door) 1st floor 3 bedrooms and a separate bathroom and toilet , 2nd floor big relax and "chill out" room under the ceiling. The largest bedroom is installed as my 'study' Garden with 12m2 fish pond and a brick garden house to put all the stuff the wife complains about  House is very well insulated (for Belgian standards). Now I'm curious about your idea's  Buy it ? BE, What kind of place you live in? I have many more ideas that I havent explored. Ones your wife would really love. |
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twilyth
Master Cruncher US Joined: Mar 30, 2007 Post Count: 2130 Status: Offline Project Badges:
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I'm definitely putting up another shed this year. But over a certain size you have to get permission from the town. I think its more or less automatic as long as you follow certain rules.
----------------------------------------The cheapest ones are steel, but every one i've ever seen was rusted and looked awful. Wood is next but difficult to set up and maintain. Plastic is the most expensive but probably the most durable. Also, easy to set up. I hadn't considered using one for electronics (I know you're not suggesting that) but it might work. The only think I would worry about is condensation. Although summertime heat would likely be a problem for even machines that are normally clocked. Courine's DIY geothermal idea would be perfect in that situation. I'm going to have to get rental prices on a back hoe, but I'm pretty sure they're at least a couple hundred dollars a day - easily. |
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courine
Master Cruncher Capt., Team In2My.Net Cmd. HQ: San Francisco Joined: Apr 26, 2007 Post Count: 1794 Status: Offline Project Badges:
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Well it's a quite standard home, for Belgian standards, with a basement divided into 3 segments - 2 smaller with ventilation openings that are connected to the larger one with the stairs to the ground floor -, nothing much in this basement besides 2 Q6600's, cold water pipes and wood that is drying out for our stove (besides central heating). Ground floor consists of 4 assymetricely interconnected spaces - entrance is 5th space with 2nd toilet, space for shoes etc -, 6th space is for the central heating boiler and storage. (5th and 6th are separated by a door) 1st floor 3 bedrooms and a separate bathroom and toilet , 2nd floor big relax and "chill out" room under the ceiling. The largest bedroom is installed as my 'study' Garden with 12m2 fish pond and a brick garden house to put all the stuff the wife complains about House is very well insulated (for Belgian standards). Now I'm curious about your idea's Buy it ? BE, What kind of place you live in? I have many more ideas that I havent explored. Ones your wife would really love. There are many concepts to be explored, but most of them revolve around having seperate subsystems in the house fighting each other. Another revolves around recaptureing waste gas heat for preheating the hot water intake. If you live on a slope, you can lift water into a kenetic store to run a AC generator that sync's with your main power grid, eliminating inverter loss. |
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