TLDR: No, but if you own bitcoin and can afford to, you should get one anyway.
Secure the network.
First off, I'm not mining to heat my house, and I'm not mining to earn bitcoin. I'm not mining out of the goodness of my heart either. I'm mining because I store my family's savings in bitcoin, and mining centralization looks like a real threat to me. I've written about it here and here if you're interested in reading more about why this is so important for average bitcoiners. That being said, I'd like to earn (or at least not lose) bitcoin in the process, and I'd also love to heat my home with it.
Nano 3
In one of the aforementioned posts, I made a stink about how little hash one contributes with a lottery miner and @OT called me out on ignoring hardware centralization concerns with Bitmain. Well, Canaan isn't exactly a small company, and they're not open source, but they aren't Bitmain, and I found a miner that's about eight times as powerful as the virtual signaling1 solo miners at about the same cost.
My big find was the Nano 3. It's actually marketed as a space heater with three heating settings. At it's warmest, this guy mines at 4TH/s and uses about 140 watts. So it's about as efficient as a midrange s19, hashes about the a third as much as an s9, and costs as much as a Bitaxe. As a tool for decentralization, I'd say that's a great combo.
Ironically, most of the folks I see talking about it online are shitcoiners that use it to solo mine Bitcoin Cash. I wonder if this phenomenon is culturally turning bitcoiners off to a better decentralizing tool.
Recycled Heat
So, now that I have them, I can tell you from personal experience how they're doing as heaters. Well, they are pushing heat out. However, it's a very small fraction of what my s9s do. They look better in house2, and they're significantly quieter (but not silent), but there's no way these guys are going to let me go furnace free this winter like a similar amount3 of Bitmain products would do.
#Conclusion
So I don't see the Nano 3 as the silver bullet for home miners. I do, however, think it's a great option and am not at all bummed with my purchase. At my current electricity price, I'll pay them off (even denominated in bitcoin) at some point. But I'm also going back to the drawing board about trying to replace my furnace with miners.
Footnotes
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totally unfair characterization... I get it. Just trying to make a point with some hyperbole ↩
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The lighting is also pretty cool. You can make it pulse or strobe, and the full color spectrum is available. They're keep my kids' rooms a LITTLE bit warmer this winter and double as a cool night lite that teaches them about bitcoin. The ones in living areas do the same for guests. I consider these non-trivial features. ↩
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Similar price too! Most s9s online are about the same price as the Nano 3s. ↩