It is an amazing feeling heating your home with wood. You are able to survive in the harshest of weather, with nothing but mother nature on your side, and no gas bills... and, you may cook and heat water while you heat your environment.

Quite clever, really... invented by cavewomen, I believe.

This is our second year living in a home with nothing but a wood burner in the living room. It is not able to put out enough heat for the entire 3,000 square foot house, when the outside temperature drops below freezing, but it keeps the core living areas warm even below 0. When the temperature is 40 and above, it creates plenty of heat for the whole house.

So far this year, since late September, we have burned one cord of wood, at a cost of $270, delivered. We should have gathered up and split wood over the summer, in which case our fuel would be nearly free. Next year...

Free heat... I love that idea.

Burning wood makes you very aware of the amount of fuel you consume, the heat you use and waste, and your relationship with the environment. It feels very different manually going through a cord of word, from a tree service in Willoughby, than silently burning 1,000 cubic feet of natural gas from wherever.

Wanting to burn less wood, and conserve more heat, our focus is now on Demand Side Management - we are improving insulation around windows, and are about to pump insulation in the walls. We shall see how that improves the conservation in the house, with just the wood burner going.

Shortly, we expect to install a gas furnace, for full house heating, and we hope to add a whole house wood burner to that, in the future.

Wood burning is carbon-neutral, but it may release particulate pollution. We bought our current wood burner used, on Craig's list, and it is a fairly current model that burns efficiently, and with lower pollution than most, but there is lots of interesting science and technology to something as simple as burning wood, with new innovations on the horizon.

And, lots of local, green jobs may be created by creating and conserving energy at the individual home level.

Local energy production and demand side management are industries barely reflected in our regional workforce analyses, and green job creation playbook, yet these jobs offer the most immediate, direct, and physical benefits to residents.

In the future, how many driveways in East Cleveland should be filled with wood, for wood burners, and who will sell, install and maintain the wood burners, and cut, split and deliver wood to residents, at that price? The answer to those questions is worth $ millions, to the right people in this community, here and now.