Ready to take liquid-cooling to the next level, but on someone else’s hardware, and get free hot water in the process? Networking company Heata is currently offering UK residents free hot water for a year if they sign up to be part of the brand’s trial roll-out of its new service. 

There’s a catch, of course (okay, there’s more than one): You’ll have to allow Heata to install one of its water-heating server units in your home. The unit doesn’t replace your existing heating unit, it works alongside it — providing some, but not all, of your hot water needs. 

According to the company, the unit will provide “a useful base load” of hot water, and can provide up to 4.8kWh of hot water per day, though the exact amount will depend on usage as well as other factors. Heata is obligated to provide a minimum of 2.5kWh per day. Heata estimates its hosts will save up to £200 per year, based on average household hot water use. 

Heata will take care of the installation, which takes under two hours and has been tested with British Gas engineers and checked to ensure it doesn’t invalidate cylinder warranties with “a leading cylinder manufacturer.” Not everyone will be eligible to join Heata’s trial, of course — Heata’s unit is designed for vented domestic hot water cylinders with a diameter of 425 – 450mm, and there will need to be an adequate amount of clearance space around the unit for the installation.  

The unit will need both electricity and broadband to run. Heata will take care of the electricity via reimbursement: the electricity used to run the unit will be metered (visible to the host), and Heata will credit the host for the electricity used at 10% above the market rate. 

It’s not quite as clear how the broadband will be taken care of — in Heata’s FAQ on its trial signup page, it says that Heata will need to connect to your broadband to communicate with the units. While the company assures that “most of the time the unit will simply be sending some monitoring information (temperatures/fan speeds etc) back to base),” so you “shouldn’t notice any impact,” that’s still not great from a privacy standpoint. 

It also says it will occasionally perform speed tests, limiting larger uploads/downloads to “a fraction of this” so as not to use too much bandwidth, and that these will be scheduled overnight so as not to affect daytime speeds. On the signup page, it also states that it plans to install a “dedicated fibre or 4G/5G connection” for the unit in the future. However, in its more detailed brochure (PDF) (opens in new tab), it says the Heata unit will use “its own connection, which will be either a dedicated fiber line, or connection via 4G/5G.”

As for the server, you won’t be able to access it or use it to mine crypto or whatever you were hoping to do with it. Heata sells its compute services to businesses looking for sustainable alternatives to data centers (read: ESG points). The Heata trial lasts for one year, and may be extended, “depending on how things go.” Heata says it will take care of removing the installed unit and re-insulating the section of the cylinder that the unit was attached to. 

Heata is not the only company trying to find ways to repurpose server heat — Microsoft’s new data center in Finland reported that it would be directing its waste heat to warm the homes of local residents, covering approximately 40% of the heating needs for 250,000 people. And a data center in Hokkaido, Japan last year was reportedly using heated waste water in an eel farm. 

If you’re in the UK and more interested in “free” hot water than eels, you can sign up for Heata’s trial here.