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by bigiain 647 days ago
> Also, if you are at the point where you need to add a circut for power, you might need to seriously consider cooling, which could potentially be another side quest.

There should be an easy/reliable way to channel "waste heat" from something like this to your hot water system.

Actually, 4 or 5 kW continuous is a lot more than most domestic hot water services need. So in my usual manner of overcomplicating simple ideas, now I want to use the waste heat to run a boiler driving a steam engine, perhaps to directly mechanically run your air conditioning or heat pump compressor.

2 comments

Instant water heaters use up to and sometimes even more than 27kW. Of course boilers use less, but still...

These aren't power requirements that are insurmountable. They would get pricey though and I wish my rig for computing would use something around .1kW under load...

Using the heat from PCs would be nice. I guess most just use them as electrical heaters right now.

Let me know if you figure it out, I would be really interested hahaha
I'm doing this myself now. I have a homelab server setup and a hybrid water heater.

Stuffed the homelab next to the air intake of the water heater, now when I need hot water my water heater sucks the heat out of the air and puts it into the water.

It's obviously not 100% efficient, but at least it recaptures some of the waste heat and decreases my electrical bill somewhat.