Michael Girdley built a cryptocurrency mining rig in his shed and captured its waste heat to warm his pool for free. He pumped cold pool water through the shed, let it absorb the rig's heat, and returned it warmed. The system ran reliably for four years, offsetting electricity costs while keeping his pool heated.
Swimming pools can be super expensive to own, but not mine. It actually earned me money for a while, and here's how I did it. Let's rewind to 2018. Cryptocurrency mining is everywhere. People are setting up mining rigs in their basements, garages, and even dorm rooms. So I built a rig right in my shed. I had a bunch of computers hooked up running 24/7 earning me cryptocurrency while I sat back and relaxed. The problem was crypto mining uses a ridiculous amount of electricity, so it's brutally expensive, and if the crypto you mine goes down in value, you've wasted a ton of money. Some people relocated to where power was cheap and others invested in stuff like wind farms or solar, but no matter how No matter how much you optimize, there's always one problem: heat. Crypto mining rigs generate a ton of heat. Most people just vent it outside or run fans 24/7 to stop their rigs from overheating. But I realized something: I'm generating all this heat in my shed and paying for all this heat in my pool. Why not connect the two? So I jerry-rigged a system that pumped cold pool water into the shed and warm crypto water back into the pool. It took some trial and error, but eventually it worked, and for 4 straight years, I was literally paid to heat my pool.
