Pioneer 400

As I write these words at the winter solstice, our trusty stove is beaming a warming glow into the room and into my tired bones. I feel something that I feel for no other piece of equipment, tool, machine or domestic appliance. Gratitude. The stove feels like a benevolent old friend, somehow returning far more than it ever asks for. 

I chop some wood, wait for it dry, load it into the stove in winter and then some kind of alchemy happens. The stove takes the results of my rudimentary manual labour and creates a transcendental, warming, comforting episode. 

The wood stove strikes me as one of humankind’s greatest inventions. In my view the only other machine that comes close to a wood stove is the bicycle. Stoves are special because fire is special. But a stove is more efficient than an open fire and brings the wild outdoors into the heart of the home, without smoke and, if properly installed and used, without danger. I am sure you love your stove, but mine is the best. 

Clearview

My favourite stove is the Clearview Pioneer 400. I doubt there is a better stove out there (although the Jotul 602 that I once used at the Lazy Duck Hostel in Nethy Bridge was very impressive). 

We like this stove so much that we have bought two of them, one for our old house and another when we moved to our current home. The Charnwood Cove, which was evicted and sold to make way for the Clearview, was a fine stove too, but it was not in the same class as the Clearview or as well designed for everyday use. They are both the same price, incidentally. 

The feature I like most about the Clearview is its ‘Independent Updraft Air Distribution System’ or, as I call it ‘The Turbo’. Basically, the turbo is an extra, circular vent on the front of the stove that allows you to increase the draught for maximum fire-starting ability. Remember when you would place a sheet of newspaper over an open fireplace to dramatically increase the draught? Well, the turbo does the same thing inside the stove. 

The updraft booster is only supposed to be used to get the fire started, and then closed off. However, the great thing about it is that it can also  be used to rescue a fire that through neglect (always in ready supply in our household), has dwindled to a pile of barely glowing ash. No problem; place a couple of logs on top of the ash, open the turbo and, within 30 seconds, bright orange flames are roaring the fire back to life. This one feature has saved us a lot of ‘who let the fire go out’ arguments. 

However, it gets better, The Clearview lives up to its name and has an excellent ‘air wash’ system that keeps the glass very clean. It almost never needs to be cleaned and will only become dull and smoked it we are stupid enough to burn damp logs on low throttle. (This is a bad idea anyway, producing pollution and inefficiency). 

The controllability of this stove is what makes it such a pleasure to use. It flatters the user by being easy to light, easy to revive and always providing a good picture of the fire to cheer up the living room. Even though it is a smallish stove it will take 12 inch logs which makes life easier when cross cutting firewood. 

It is a very efficient stove and pumps out more heat per log than any other stove that I have used. For example, I have a cheap, steel box stove, with no refractory (fire brick) lining in my workshop and it gobbles much more wood than the Clearview and produces about a quarter of the heat output. 

Naturally, our dog loves this stove and she regularly opens the back door herself to run into the house and stand in front of the stove shortly after it is lit. I think she smells the wood smoke when she is out in the garden. The top is flat and generous enough to cook on, even with the top mounted flue. During power cuts we have made soup and stew on it. 

The Pioneer is a 5kW stove, which is more than enough to heat our living room and kitchen, a space about eight meters by five meters. Once it is going, we open the door to the upstairs to let the heat flow into the whole house. I recently worked out that stove is saving us £35/week on energy costs, more reason to love it. 

In her book Hovel in the Hills, Elizabth West christens her cantankerous, smokey and temperamental wood burning range ‘Stove’ and teats it almost like another member of the family. That’s what stoves are like, they develop a personality and you form a relationship with them. 

I’m sure you love yours as much as I love mine (But as I said mine is best). 

As written in Reforesting Scotland