Author

Topic: Extracting profit from mining heat as thick slab wood kiln (Read 271 times)

legendary
Activity: 3304
Merit: 1842
Curmudgeonly hardware guy
Hope you got good dust filtration or it'd get gross real fast.
copper member
Activity: 658
Merit: 101
Math doesn't care what you believe.
My hot aisle hit about 120F at 10% humidity in the summer.  Thinking of hanging some racks back there and making some jerky!
legendary
Activity: 4466
Merit: 1798
Linux since 1997 RedHat 4
You first need a 100PH mining farm ... few have them.

Otherwise you're spending a lot of money on dealing with a small amount of heat.
legendary
Activity: 3304
Merit: 1842
Curmudgeonly hardware guy
I've thought for years that if I ever built out a proper facility I'd use the waste heat for a community greenhouse in winter. Fuzzy's right, as long as the miner temps stay comfy you can do anything you want with the hot air.

If the ducting is long you'll want a secondary blower to help move the air without causing a lot of resistance against the miner fans. Not sure what you'e require for thermostat controls but having a second cold-air inlet that mixes with the hot air in the ducting before reaching your kiln might be necessary to slow down drying if your wood starts to split. Shouldn't be too hard to rig up.
legendary
Activity: 3612
Merit: 2506
Evil beware: We have waffles!
As long as the miners are happy with their temps that should work just fine. Same goes for using the waste heat to keep a bakery proofing room warm.
jr. member
Activity: 48
Merit: 4
I saw this mentioned a few times in other threads but nothing with very much detail so I thought I'd make a thread to see if anyone had done something similar.

The basic idea is to use the excess heat from a mining farm to dry thicker slabs of wood than what you can normally get at wood supply shops. Thicker slabs are more valuable to wood turners and things like bowl blanks can sell for quite a bit of money on sites like etsy and ebay.

There is an infinite amount of free wood on craigslist. Tree service companies will often happily give away the trunks they remove because they have to pay to have it hauled off.

Light bulb kiln for Drying Wood: (update) woodturning with Sam Angelo
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z09xUNGTcg4

Drying Wooden Bowl Blanks With A Homemade Wood Kiln
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vVrDfbZjn2s&t=2s

Making wood bowl blanks from logs using a chain saw
https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=making+bowl+blanks+from+logs

Bowl blank prices on etsy
https://www.etsy.com/search?q=bowl%20blanks

Cheap harbor freight tools for actually making a finished bowl
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SrWz4kqgZnA

Has anyone done something similar to pipe mining heat into a wood kiln in such a way that the wood dries within a month or so without cracking?
Jump to: