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The Goethermal Heat Pump Consortium is an industry group. Their site is full of information resources, blogs,and forums.

Bookwormhole.net -- over 7500 published book reviews.

Geo-thermal heating and cooling, also is the same idea. Just not using lakes as the source. I read about this in a magazine, and seem excited. The cost seems a little steep, however, it is an investment. It will pay for itself over time. It will reduce your heating/cooling costs by 2 thirds. Others have commented on the fact that the lakes will eventually heat up, which is a bad thing. I don't see a way to prevent this. Unless you can dump cold back in the winter. However, on a small scale this would be negligible. I think that if you are looking for alternative methods to heat and cool, there are many different ideas. I think relying one type to manage the a/c problem, is how we got into this mess in the first place. ( I haven't read about the lake tech tho. so i might be talking out my ass). The trouble is the idea that this is so cheap that there is no need too conserve. I have set my a/c in my house to 79. Sometimes I think that its warm inside, but then I go outside and come back in, and its much nicer. Now if there was a way to beam some of the excess heat into space then we might have something....

I have recently put a Geothermal heat pump in my home, it has cut my cost in half, and will pay for it self in 8 years, (much less if gas keeps rising in price at the same rate). If anyone is intesting, (sorry this site is more for the US) http://www.geoexchange.org/

This doesn't directly apply to the poster, but for home owners, look into geothermal heat pumps.

Like one of these?
Or this?
How about one of these?

Geothermal is available pretty much everywhere since it is basically extracting solar energy. Around 50% of the incident solar radiation is absorbed in the ground. Where I live in Canada, the ground is at a constant temperature of around 9C (48F). This is ideal as a heat sink for cooling in the summer and as a heat source for heating in the winter.

There are companies that make closed-loop ground source heat exchangers which can be put into urban locations because the pipes are put in vertically. Their overall COP (which is a measure of how much heat you get out versus energy put in) are between 4 and 4.5 for the vertical loop systems. This means that everywhere kWhour put in to run the system gives out 4-4.5kWhours, for an "efficiency" of over 400%. There is no better source of heating and cooling available than geothermal.

Check out Geothermix, Maritime Geothermal, ClimateMaster and Geoexhange.org

I'm in the process of renovating one house and building another one and both are being fitted with geothermal systems.

Paul.

What you propose is basically a Heat Recovery Ventilator or an Energy Recovery Ventilator. (I can't remember what the fine distinction is between them.) They work best in larger industrial-type settings, where there is likely to be a good understanding of the details among a range of variables (air changes per hour with and without proposed system, average temperature ranges inside and out, temperature loads inside, predictable peak variations, etc.). Then the system can be designed to be efficient to the site. And yeah, the building has to be really air-tight. Otherwise there isn't enough heat/cold flowing out to reclaim.

For a residential situation, a better bet may be a Geothermal Heat Pump. Since the deep ground can be counted on to stay at a fairly constant temperature throughout the year, that's one variable in the system that is just about locked down. Pump the heat out of it in the winter, and back into it in the summer. The downside is in the digging/drilling. (Though if you have a large property, a pond can be incorporated.)

By the way, there is a system very similar to what you propose that will reclaim the heat from the water going down your drain. It's called a Grey Water Heat Exchanger. Everytime you shower, the heat going down the drain is recalimed and used to warm the water that's going into your hot water tank, so it doesn't have to work so hard.

Let's see, to keep from being *too far* off-topic ... you can insulate the plumbing in your GHP system with aerogel, so the surface ground temperatures don't cut into the efficiency too much.