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" CABOT, Vt. \u2014 A few weeks ago, we received an early morning phone call from a neighbor. &amp;quot;Turn on your radio,&amp;quot; she said. &amp;quot;The DJ is ranting about Ben&amp;#039;s Energy Family story in Popular Mechanics.&amp;quot;  We didn&amp;#039;t get tuned in quickly enough to catch the rant, but according to those who heard it, he was fuming that I was advocating expensive alternative energy technologies that most Vermonters simply can&amp;#039;t afford.  I&amp;#039;m thinking about that today after returning from a friend&amp;#039;s house. This friend recently installed a central, wood-fired masonry heater. It&amp;#039;s constructed of brick and soapstone, and it&amp;#039;s huge and beautiful, and if you&amp;#039;re inclined to wood heat, you&amp;#039;d want one. It also cost him upwards of 20 grand.  Whereas most wood-burning stoves need a constant fire to make heat, a masonry heater is designed to be fired once or maybe twice a day (when it&amp;#039;s really cold out). The fire burns super hot, and the heat is captured in the mass of the heater. For the rest of the day, you have a huge radiant heat sink in the middle of your house. My friend hadn&amp;#039;t fired his heater in two days, and it was still making 105-degree water (he ran a hot water loop through his, which makes perfect sense) and was putting off a good bit of heat.  I can&amp;#039;t really argue with that DJ. Alternative energy is expensive, at least on an individualized level. With conventional energy prices where they are (still relatively low), alternatives can&amp;#039;t be argued based on price alone. And I&amp;#039;m not going to climb my soapbox of environmental wholesomeness; sure, this is an important issue, but, fact is, most people don&amp;#039;t have the luxury of converting their homes and habits to fight global warming.  I&amp;#039;m not letting anyone off the hook; we all need to do what we can. I guess I just want to remind people that you don&amp;#039;t need to go and drop $40,000 on a solar system or $20,000 on a masonry heater to reduce your footprint. The beauty of &amp;quot;living green&amp;quot; is that the largest gains are the most easy to realize. Turn off the lights. Turn down the thermostat. Car pool. When your fridge conks out, buy one that&amp;#039;s a little smaller and perhaps forgo the icemaker. These are the sort of choices and actions that can actually save you money and benefit the world at large. And who could rant about that? \u2014Ben Hewitt "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.popularmechanics.com/science/energy/a1392/4212938/>