Going back to your original question of efficiency and lower cost ... I'm guessing that because
Canada was pushing for such things they must be more efficient and cheaper to run. APS does a good job explaining what a simple home built system could be, whether such a thing would be cheaper to run (all legalities aside) vs a commercial heat pump or normal AC is another question. Some light reading FYI ...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heat_pump
http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu.../heatpump.html
Maybe the thing to do is to move the
habitat to the water and not the water to the habitat. It's been done on the Lake before ...