I've just been wondering, I have this physics project and we have a budget of ?50,000, at the moment I'm well under budget which is good but I was just wondering, if i locate a house near a hot spring, could i use the hot spring for heating the house, i can use it for hot water but I'm not sure about heating, if i can, how? Thanks :)
Sure, you can use it for electricity also, if it is hot enough. A lot depends on the temperature of the hot spring. .
There are many places where the water from hot springs is distributed to the houses for heating and bathing purposes.
The most simplest method will be to use a simple heat exchanger and blower. The hot water springs can be pumped into the unit having the blower.Inside the unit use copper pipes in front of the blower to transfer the heat to air.Remember to use insulated cpvc pipes so as to minimize heat loss while pumping water from source to unit. This is a cheap yet effective method of heating. However if the spring is really good that is it can make superheated steam then you can use it to generate electricity.then the electricity can be further supplied to an heater. Finding such springs is really difficult and it is more difficult to harness geothermal energy and it is also quite expensive. i would suggest you use concentrating solar or biogas for your project which is more efficient as well as cheap.
