Heating represents a significant expense in household budgets. As winter approaches, it is important to consider whether the solution adopted in the past remains appropriate for the layout of your home and the needs of its occupants. What if, this year, you considered an innovative approach by incorporating Bitcoin mining into your energy calculations? Come and discover the Pool des Chauffagistes, a French community initiative that is 100% “pleb.”
The fundamentals of Bitcoin: decentralized security and Proof of Work
To fully understand Bitcoin mining, we need to go back to the basics. Conceived by Satoshi Nakamoto, security is based on a delicate balance between three stakeholders, allowing for the distribution of power and ensuring the integrity of the network.
In this relationship, the miner plays an essential role as they create the blocks. To counterbalance this power, nodes verify and validate transactions and blocks, censoring incorrect or fraudulent blocks. Finally, Bitcoin network users are the last link in the chain, as they have the power to choose which blockchain they will use.
This balance creates a situation in which each actor in the network is incentivized to act correctly in order to protect both their own interests and those of other participants.
Finally, Proof of Work (PoW) represents the physical link between the real world and Bitcoin. This link ensures that participation in the network and the validation of transactions require an investment in tangible resources. Thus, the production and validation of blocks have a real energy cost, preventing the monopolization of the network by entities that could take control without any significant barriers to entry.
Writing the history of Bitcoin in its public ledger: immutability of the blockchain and the puzzle analogy
The mining process therefore consists of solving a kind of digital puzzle, a hash that is valid and acceptable to the Bitcoin network (defined according to criteria established by the protocol). The first miner to solve this puzzle presents their solution to the entire network, which can verify the validity of the work performed. The block is then validated and added to Bitcoin’s ledger (the blockchain). The miner then receives a reward in BTC in recognition of the work done and to offset the costs incurred in the process. To solve this puzzle, miners must solve a very difficult mathematical problem. This problem consists of finding a magic number called a “nonce” which, when combined with the block data, gives a specific result called a “hash.” Thus, all participants in the network are constantly calculating to try to find this answer. Although it is possible to find this hash manually, the complexity of the operation makes this option unfeasible. This computing power is therefore deployed by machines capable of performing calculations quickly.
Pool mining: combining forces to multiply chances
Since there is no smart way to find the hash, you have to try as many possibilities as possible every second, and it is this capacity that increases your chances of winning a block in the big Bitcoin lottery.
This power is measured in the number of hashes calculated per second. This means that for 1 kH/s, you have a computing power of 1,000 hashes per second. You therefore propose 1,000 puzzle solutions every second. A small, isolated mining machine competing with computing giants therefore sees its chances of success reduced to a negligible level. This is why it is beneficial to pool the computing resources of the weakest within a pool. This allows associated miners to find blocks more frequently and distribute rewards fairly according to each person’s contribution.
Convergence between the Attakai project and the democratization of home mining
As mentioned above, connecting Bitcoin to the physical world requires computing power supported by energy. The computers used in mining are energy-intensive and consume a significant amount of electricity. This consumption is due to the electrical resistance of the components, as the energy flowing through them is partially lost and creates heat, known as the “Joule effect.” This is where the principle of Attakai (which means “ideal temperature” in Japanese) comes in. The idea is to make dual use of mining machines by exploiting both their primary purpose of securing the Bitcoin network and their potential to emit heat.
To better understand the benefits of this approach, we need to examine the relationship between energy and heat production in an electrical system. For an investment of 1 kW of electrical energy, an electric radiator, like a Bitcoin miner, produces 1 kW of heat.
The difference lies in the fact that a miner diffuses heat continuously and evenly throughout a room (unlike older radiators) and also allows its user to support the Bitcoin network and acquire a potentially winning lottery ticket, thereby earning BTC.
The Heating Engineers Pool
Now that you have learned the basics of Bitcoin mining, you are finally ready to discover the subject of this article: the Heating Engineers Pool!
This project originated on a community server on Discord, a discussion platform that has undergone a notable evolution since it was initially dedicated to Pi Network, but has gradually refocused on Bitcoin under the impetus of its creator, Fulcran.
Some installations at Chauffagistes. pic.twitter.com/j9Afgqe8kx
— Chauffagistes Pool (@Chauff_pool) September 26, 2025
With nearly 656 members at the time of writing, this discussion group aims to help its members develop their skills on the subject of Bitcoin. This common topic brings together people from all walks of life: DIY enthusiasts, investors, activists, technology enthusiasts, and more. For many, especially among the early members, it was Fulcran’s educational videos on YouTube that served as a gateway to the world of Bitcoin. As Hugo explains, “Fulcran showed how accessible and tangible Bitcoin really is.”
Then, on April 28, 2025, the Chauffagistes pool was born: a free “Bitcoin Pleb” mining initiative aimed at harnessing the heat produced and pooling expertise.
A spirit of learning and discovery
This spirit of education promoted by Fulcran is also what sets this pool apart from others, namely its unique ability to make an activity often perceived as abstract concrete, useful, and transferable.
This forum is a collaborative space that functions as an incubator, allowing its members to experiment, learn, and progress together. These enthusiasts are driven by the same curiosity and a shared desire to innovate.
The spirit of this community is warm, technical, and committed. It values resourcefulness, sharing, and local impact.
Tynaoned
A computer enthusiast, Hugo is one of the project’s initiators and is responsible for developing the website and managing the dashboard that displays the community pool’s metrics.
He explains that the real strength of this group lies in its diverse membership:
There are newcomers almost every day, each with their own way of reusing the heat produced by their miners. Some are real experts, others are just starting out, but everyone shares their knowledge. It’s a lively, supportive, and passionate community, where everyone helps each other improve.
Hugo
We saw this in our interviews, as we spoke with a landscaper, students, an engineer, workers…from France, Belgium, Burundi, and Guadeloupe!
The more the pool grows, the more serious it becomes. Sometimes it makes me smile: at the beginning, we were just a bunch of enthusiasts who wanted to heat their living rooms by mining.
ItRider
How the Chauffagistes pool works in practice
All information on how the pool works is freely available on the project’s official website. As for the software components developed in-house, they are published as open source on GitHub, ensuring total transparency.
The pool is based on a node hosted in the Paris region and benefits from redundancy on a second local geographic site.
There are therefore three ways to mine within the heating engineers’ pool:
- “Pure solo mining” – This allows miners who do not want to maintain a node to connect to the heating engineers’ node. You play alone and 100% of the winnings will be yours if you are successful.
- “Collaborative private mining” – This allows miners who do not want to maintain a node to connect to the heating engineers’ node. You play with your friends in a private group and share the winnings as you see fit.
- Pool mining – You pool your computing power with other miners in the pool, and the winnings are distributed according to the sum of the difficulties of your shares over the last 14 days before the block is found. The rewards go to a multi-signature wallet held by several members. All keys are stored on hardware wallets.
When you join the pool, you can enter the Bitcoin address you use to share your shares and access a detailed dashboard. This allows you to view all kinds of statistics about your mining machines: hashrate, shares, etc.
Today, around 75 devices are connected to the mining pool, representing around 20 miners, and every day new curious people arrive on Discord to join the ranks.
It should also be noted that the pool does not charge any fees and operates thanks to donations from the community and the voluntary work of its members.
This is not a commercial pool: it is a collective laboratory in which energy recovery and the pleasure of mining come first! In large mining pools, those with very powerful miners who generate a lot of invalid shares win. But here, what matters is having fewer shares, but valid ones.
Mvg
In addition, recently, each month, the best share of the month is rewarded with various gifts offered by members. For example, in November, a NerdNOS kit is offered by Silexperience as well as a pack of IPA beers from drink Bob.
A share is a unit used to measure the contribution of each miner within the pool. In concrete terms, it is a hash of the target block that reaches a lower difficulty than the actual difficulty required by the Bitcoin network. Shares thus prove that the miner is working, even if the hash produced is not sufficient to find a real block.
A difficulty of 1.13 T on a target of 129 T on the Bitcoin network at that time.
This August, the pool saw a remarkable share with an Avalon Nano 3.
A trophy offered on this occasion by the goat @Silexperience
Keep heating! 🔥 pic.twitter.com/rHeaFbcgiK
— Chauffagistes Pool (@Chauff_pool) September 4, 2025
A catalyst for innovation and ingenuity
A few years ago, home mining was still a DIY and experimental venture. In 2022, a single person was producing Bitaxes prototypes, often cobbled together in Tupperware plastic boxes, explains Silexperience.
Always so proud to receive photos of miners connected to the pool 🔥
To connect, whether solo or mining together with our members, go here: https://t.co/LdX1ARDV5Z pic.twitter.com/VaZDn6FYKx
— Chauffagistes Pool (@Chauff_pool) August 14, 2025
The latter was also the first in Europe to manufacture this type of miner. As ProfScofield confirms, the arrival of pre-assembled Bitaxes, available from BitcoinBazar and offered by Silexperience, has made the technical approach much more accessible. He explains that it is now possible to quickly learn the basics of mining without the risk of discouragement.
In addition, the initial investment, although not insignificant, is now accessible to everyone. As Evan explains, “the cost of a turnkey machine, including adjustments to reduce noise and recover heat, remains reasonable compared to a conventional heating system.”
Furthermore, technical difficulties are minimized thanks to an abundance of online tutorials, particularly on Plan B Academy, and active communities that are always ready to share their advice and experience.
Silexperience also offers technical support to Bitaxes users on the pool. This is a very useful helping hand, emphasizes Fulcran, allowing everyone to progress with peace of mind, even when faced with technical challenges. Thanks to a significant reduction in these technical and financial barriers, it is now easier to take advantage of the dual benefits of mining and to create devices tailored to one’s own needs.
Within the group, several innovative initiatives caught our attention. One example is Bob, a brewer who only accepts Bitcoin as payment and wants to heat his brewing vats using the heat from his mining equipment.
Silexperience has already reduced the energy costs of eight households and three businesses that had solar panels and use the energy produced to power their miners. He says that the latter have doubled the value of their production. He also wants to use this waste heat to heat greenhouses in the near future.
Finally, bricobtc explains that it wants to use the heat source from its miners to dry its fruit and herbs. This new use will allow it to have three simultaneous uses: heating, Bitcoin lottery, and dryer. It tells us that this is a more profitable use of its savings than squandering them on scratch cards, as it did before.
Most miners will simply place their miners in the rooms they want to heat. But there is no shortage of exchanges and ideas on the discussion channel dedicated to heating engineers, so here’s some inspiration for your next auxiliary heating system.
Conclusion
This democratization allows mining to serve as a lever for education and a testing ground. It is a way to reconcile technology and sobriety, to produce value while meeting real needs.
I love my Nano3S for its heating capabilities. It’s very practical and has also helped me get my wife to accept mining. The heating aspect makes it practical. Rather than heating a resistor with no other benefits, you might as well do it while mining.
Raph
Thus, in the Pool des Chauffagistes, mining is not seen as an end in itself, but as a means of producing useful heat, pooling skills, and documenting reproducible solutions, explains Tynaoned.
This project brings people together “around values of transparency, autonomy, and technological sobriety, while opening up avenues for local, educational, and energy uses.”
