Topic: Nearly burned down my home due to mining farm (tips on how to stay safe ) (Read 38323 times)

There's been a rise of the crap happening.

Just report it.

why in the heavens did you revive a thread that has not been posted on for 6 years?

Thank God you are not injured. Good luck and be careful from now on !

When I had my 12 GPU mining farm pimping away the coins for me, I only ever used Corsair single rail power supplies and a Kill-A-Watt meter.  Additionally, I mapped out every circuit breaker in the breaker box and drew a diagram of the house, so I knew exactly which outlets were being fed by which breakers.  I would use 12 gauge extension cords to bring power into the miners from other rooms, (I was single and had the place to myself) so nothing was ever overloaded.  I'm a bit anal retentive, but I never had an electrical problem except for paying the power bill.

Don't even get me started on that Todd Hoffman jackass.  I can't even count how many times he has "known where the gold was" or "had a feeling", or his favorite word - "guaranteed" to find gold.  I'd like to have a dozen guys hold him down and shave off that stupid ass chin beard of his, it looks so dumb.

   Todd Hoffman wasn't a hack at the very end, he was a hack the whole way.  And good ol' Jack:  "Sometimes you get old and you do dumb stuff". 

Safety should have had its own sub-forum long ago.

In Gold mining, your mine site still has to be "federally safe" and has to be part of your mine plan before you are allowed even mine.

If you own a mine, or mining claim, you'll know what a mining plan is and how important the safety aspect of it is.

It's sad to see someone's hard labor and investment go up in smoke...

Don't rule out sabotage, that's a lot of income, making a "poor" government jealous.

None the less, for those that are safety aware, here's the wiring section of my mining plan in a few words:

-Build an auto-kill switch system.
-When it comes to wiring, ALWAYS your largest gauge wire.
-Anything with Bitcoin mining should be 14 gauge minimum over 15 feet but 12 gauge is most desirable in any application and any length.
-The longer the extensions, the more you pay on delivery fees and the harder/expensive it gets to find large gauge extensions.
-I buy mine from Zoro, they sell good quality, large gauge, long extensions; good for USA and Canada. 
-Keep PSU wires separate or as far from each other as possible.
-Use white wires when possible since it doesn't attract heat like black does.
-Monitor cable heat by hand throughout the day, report unusual hot-spots.
-Make sure that if you have light coming in that it cannot cause hot-spots to wires or machines. (A Running Black PSU in the sun is ticking bomb)
-Use white foam cores to cover black areas from the sun if miners can become exposed to harmful sunlight.
-If PSU wires are too wimpy, buy larger ones, those should definitely be 16ga to begin with.
-Overpower PSU - Works less but costs a bit more, always at least 100W over maximum recommended, 150 is ideal, 200 is best, 250 is overkill.
-Overpowering PSU also reduces the overall power tension in the system since it works less for the same work.
-The best cooling is outside air because it's free and plenty but that may not work in areas where the outside temp is too high; IE: Florida
-Keep mine's temperature around 35 degrees; miners are their own dehumidifier, very dry conditions increase fire hazard too.
-Make sure your home's wiring is modern, meaning, newer than 1975 (Not 100% sure on the year).  If not, get it modernized.
-Make sure there is someone that can keep an eye on your mine if you leave for extended periods of time and train/pay them.
-Stack machines no more than 3 high for 1U's and do not stack 3U's at all.

Just because it's "computer mining" still makes it, mining.  Same offline rules apply here too, that is, shit's gonna break, your suppliers will screw you over, you're gonna swear a lot but you'll enjoy what you're doing.  There is a little saying in the Gold mining world we tell rookies.


I think your problem was a lack of an automatic kill-switch system.  Another type of miner that arose from Gold mining are "the hacks"... guys that do everything right all the way but hacks the last mile and loses everything. #ToddHoffman (A disgrace to Gold Miners)

Well, I hope new miners will read this thread before getting into Bitcoin mining, lots of good electrical and general safety comments in this thread.  Should be made a sticky in the Getting Started forum.

As for the Cowboyminer fire, I'd like to point out that it's ~90F this time of the year anywhere near Thailand on a hot day. With little to no wind, I can imagine the fire simply fueled itself because the whole air source was simply stagnant hotter air becoming even hotter. Sure, they had fans, but they were probably just recirculating the same low lying air(I realize they are blowing out). They also mention they used some sort of glue with the insulation that may or may not have been fireproof. For power consumption, the whole operation doesn't draw that much compared to some small datacenters in the US. Not to mention the non usage of any fusing mechanisms and proper breaker shutoff systems between three(three!) buildings. That's if they were even using breakers at all. If something catches on fire with that much airflow with units stacked 7-9 high on top of each other, things are going to get very bad. As far as most ASIC companies go, safety probably isn't one of the first things these kinds of companies have a knack or care for (profit, cough cough). Sure, it's UL listed, and maybe had some QC stickers slapped on it, but that doesn't mean donkey dicks.

TLDR: It was probably due to a short or heat failure and inexperience took hold.

So is GPU as dangerous as ASIC or better?

Note I do not say do any of the below ideas. I am a peaceful person:

And as the wonderful brilliant states-person Sara Palin says lets  target them

http://www.harpyness.com/2011/01/08/congresswoman-on-sarah-palins-target-list-murdered-at-political-event/


So that is a 30mw  plant running 40 to 50ph in hash .  So   one burned  down in Thailand with 6-8ph.

So how wise does having all this hash in one spot look today? I wonder how well they are sleeping in Sweden today?

GPUs are not equal to ASIC mining rigs.


News flash for you!

http://www.datacenterknowledge.com/archives/2014/11/06/knc-miner-to-build-another-20mw-for-bitcoin-mining-in-sweden/

Because they can.

There's really no reason to stack those 9 high with that much space. Despite that supposedly not being the issue.

Just goes to show ya... you have to think of everything.

Cubes should have been turned off long ago.

A simple auto-shutoff (Thermostat) system would have saved your mine and part of your home; Costs $100 for a really good one.

Here is the (German) Link

This thead is since yesterday in the Golem
Sorry cant post the URL - Iam mobile.
Best regards
Christian

One thing is bugging me about the recent fire: Why is ~5% of the world hash-power all in one place?

Edit: the German news article said the farm used about 5MW, which would only be 10Petahashes/second at most.
I suppose if I want to be unlazy, I can look up how many machines were supposed to be in the facility.

I wouldnt believe it otherwise but Ive seen a fire start on a graphics card that was mining.   It was only brief and came from a small capacitor I think but I suppose its possible for it to spread if cabling were not done right.   A house operation may have too much dust, where as a proper setup with correct air management would probably help prevent heat build up better then your little small miner with it sitting on a carpet

Well, I have seen GPU capacity burst out in flame, although its not long but if the fire catch something else then its gone..

Oh dude, how you did not have another wallet backup. Epic.

Fires are not cause by the mining machines themselves, they're usually caused by non-electrically trained people overloading the electrical capacity of their cables, or people not maintaining their equipment and cleaning the dust out of it.

 

It's possible, in the future that miner manufacturers might include a trojan box on some large orders hoping to set fire on customers' farm.