Yep, that sounds like the one I was coveting. Probably cost over $30K installed, not counting foundation. Worth every penny if you can afford it IMO, but it was out of my budget. Mine was about $5K for the heater core kit plus the local mason's time for chimney, stonework, benches etc...
Your friend's heater sounds something like this :
One note for anyone interested in building a heater -- I used a mixture of Arriscraft and local granite to cover the heater. Arriscraft was recommended over cultured stone because it was supposed to transmit heat much better where cultured stone would trap the heat inside. Initial results indicate that Arriscraft is not transmitting much heat either, and it's only the granite mixed in which makes the heater work properly.
Before you ask, the reason for considering cultured stone was that the builder was finding that outside stonework was becoming prohibitively expensive as the local masons retired and were not replaced, but cultured stone required much less fitting and so the costs were both lower and more predictable.
As with the flaming torches in the great room, the outside finish started with "big slabs of limestone", the builder responded with "cultured stone", and we settled on Arriscraft which was also a manufactured stone but without any attempt to look like real stone. Since we wanted to use the same stonework on the heater to tie the inside and outside together, the supposedly better heat transfer of Arriscraft was another argument in its favor.
Fortunately, the mason thought the Arriscraft was "boring" and mixed in some local granite, which really looked sharp and didn't blow the budget. The same approach was used on the heater, and right now I think the mason's decision to mix in granite ended up saving my butt. If we had used nothing but Arriscraft on the heater I think I might be looking at tearing the stone facing off and starting over.
EDIT - Aww crap. Tulikivi's are on sale and the prices seem pretty good :
http://www.warmstone.com/pdf/TU2200%20CAMPAIGN.pdf
