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My wife’s uncle has large pond outside his house and wedding venue. He has two units. One closed and one that directly draws the water. The closed unit has half a mile of coils sunk in the pond. He says the open unit is more maintenance.

His heating and cooling bills are not far off from my house. Considering he has 3 buildings similar sized to my house it’s a pretty drastic reduction.

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Yeah, there are of course also water-air, water-water pumps (although I've never heard of the open-circuit ones, but yeah, why not). But you have to have access to a large enough body of water that doesn't freeze and has enough capacity.

The main issue for me with air-X heat pumps is that over time it can start to make a lot of noise if not well maintained.

But the closed-circuit under-ground (or under-water) ones essentially don't need maintenance and are incredibly efficient, as the source never goes very cold.

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