Re: Are asic miners really as effective as heaters for the winter?

While they can provide heat, miners have 4 drawbacks:
1) usually no on/off switch
2) not child or pet friendly usually
3) not as cheap as natural gas in some areas for heating
4) Most importantly - hot PCBs and components give off VOCs that pollute the air - these are known carcinogens. 1 miner running 24/7 probably is no worse than new carpet. Having a farm running in a house with no fresh air could cause permanent detrimental health effects.

4) can be solved by an air purifer if you are concerned about VOCs.

Home air purifiers will not filter out the dangerous VOCs. They can ionize and capture free ionized elemental particles - they will not filter out VOCs. You would need a scrubber like those found in respirators or activated filters.

The only solution to this is constantly bringing in clean outside air. The self contained oil based space heaters don't emit much outside of their metal housing.

You can put the mining device to the tank with mineral oil. This way, any VOCs released should be in mineral oil only.

While the specific heat of mineral oil is high it would require pumps to circulate heat.

What would be a good way to use the latent heat would be to use a heat exchanger and transfer the heat via water or oil to the housing area where it is needed. This would require a little energy but then the concerns about VOCs would be eliminated.

Sounds good, but that would incur a lot of renovation cost to modified the house.