Home Mining

Home mining is exactly what it says on the tin. You buy the ASIC miner, install it in your home and start securing the Bitcoin network.

You have full access to the miner at all times and it’s in your possession.

Despite this appealing characteristic of home mining, there are some considerations and risks to owning and running your own miner from home.

Unlike hosting and cloud services, mining from home means that the maintenance, repair, running costs and other hidden factors also all fall on you to sort out. Here are the main risks or considerations when home mining:

• Electricity costs – ASICs require electricity to run, and lots of it, as they create new blocks. This will add to your electricity bills if you don’t have a cheap way to factor in the additional energy usage for the miner.
• Electricity supply – if the supply of electricity isn’t consistent, you experience outages or even power surges, this will affect the performance of the miner and can cause damage to it – remember that the ASIC will run at full speed when switched on, there is no “standby”.
• Repair & maintenance costs – the average lifespan of a miner is about 4-5 years but that’s not to say it won’t run in to issues during that time. If the ASIC isn’t maintained properly or cleaned on regular intervals, it might break down quicker, adding to the costs. Typical components are the cooling fan, hash board and power supply unit (PSU).
• Heat – the waste product of all that proof-of-work from the ASIC is copious amounts of heat so the area you will have the miner in needs to be ventilated and cooled to keep the ASIC from overheating. Conversely, starting the ASIC when the room is at a low temperature may also cause damage on starting up so a heater could also be required, depending on the miner requirements.
• Humidity – during cooler months, condensation and general room humidity can add unwanted moisture on to the circuits of the miner so having a dehumidifier will help reduce this risk
• Noise – the noise from an ASIC will generally come from it’s own fan motor that tries to keep it cool. This runs at about 80 decibels so you will know about it if you have one in your living room. Having a separate space to have the miner away from your living area like the garage, basement or its own  noise-proof container can help (although you will also need to make sure these areas are optimised for your miner)
• Warranty – what is the warranty period of the miner? Will the manufacture cover repair if the miner breaks down? Is the warranty void under certain conditions?

As you can see, there are a lot of considerations for home mining but if you have optimised your set-up, taken all these into account and embrace the sovereign Bitcoiner mindset then home mining could be for you.