I didn''t think a stove could be a life-changer, but my Pioneer was. It heated the entire house to such an extent that one Christmas we had to open the French doors. I used it to bake bread,
make soups, boil beans - in fact everything a hob and oven could do, my Pioneer could do - and faster. I never ever used the central heating (I never worked out how to, but it wasn''t necessary) and it was the cheapest way of heating and cooking. I grieved when I sold the house and included the stove. And now I sit huddled over an inefficient stove that eats up logs, waiting for my supplier to take delivery of my next Pioneer and change my life again. I had a Jotul once which didn''t compare. My Aga multifuel woodburner comes nowhere near. I absolutely 100% recommend the Pioneer.
great stove highly recommended, oven large enough for my pressure cooker pot, gets really hot amazing heat from small quantitys of wood, if you stack it full and shut down will stay in overnight
, it is very easy to light ,my mid terraced house is so hot now up stairs and down havent needed to use the gas heating and dont intend to .my only problem with this is the silly price tag but i have it now so they better not reduce it now
the picture here is not accurate and makes it look a lot taller than it is when you purchase, in this photo a pedestal has been added giving it a gawky look .The pioneer is a great neat little
stove that will heat any normal house room and with a more strong steel shell and the down wash keeps glass clean with only a weekly clean with special glass cleaner. These stoves have a brilliant design, costs more than some but worth every penny in quality
I bought a Clearview 400 from a friend who decided it was too big for their kitchen. It worked fine, but after less than two years the baffle was completely burned out. I guess that's steel
We have had our Pioneer Oven for three years now and a very excellent stove it is: easy to light, excellent build quality, and we use it to roast potatoes, boil veg, cook casseroles etc. It
is also, perhaps by virtue of the longer smoke channel around the oven, exceptionally efficient.We have a large fireplace in a small room, for which the increased width (over the non-oven Pioneer) and the height made this stove particularly suitable. Despite its plain and unfussy styling it looks very pretty.The finish is lovely and durable but difficult to clean of cooking stains.A slight design flaw: ash falls onto the internal ledges of the door, and then onto your hearth/carpet when you open the door. This is very annoying. We have not had this problem with our Jotul stoves.The handle is very nice in brass but does get very hot.Tip: get a cast iron trivet to put in the oven to prevent your pots from overheating. Looks nice, too.
Had this stove installed a year ago, it has been well used and tested. It is fantastic! The room is 8x5 m and it can easily be set from ‘cosy’ to ‘tropical’ as desired. I grew up with
wood stoves and they were never a patch on this. The air wash system works very well.The controllability is amazing, it can be turned up or maintained as needed for cooking. It is not designed for super slow, overnight burning, but I’ve found that by moving embers to one side and then putting in a big log, the fire burns ‘across’ the box with a decent air flow, ensuring embers in the morning.The oven is great for stews, stock and mulled wine. Using the advice from a previous reviewer (magnets and a sheet of foil), I have successfully baked bread and cakes. I checked the oven temperature when covering the ‘door’ for cooking (Max 220’C), and it can get much hotter when used normally.Would definitely buy a clearview stove again and though not cheap, recommend it thoroughly.
Stove expert replied:
Very versitile stove by all accounts. Great feedback.
We recently purchased and had installed a Clearview Pioneer 400 wood burning stove. We are extremely pleased with the product and the sub contracted fitters were excellent.BUT WARNING! The stove
’s stainless steel chimney comes unpainted and company policy is for it to be spray painted in situ – in our case, our living room. Both my wife and I were concerned about the possible toxic nature of the paint and even more so the inevitable drift of the spray on to furnished/painted surfaces which we felt could not be adequately masked. We therefore decided to contact Clearview Stoves to convey these misgivings.Unfortunately the response we received from one of the directors was a good deal less than satisfactory: he was unmoved and unmoveable. We were told that spray painting the chimneys at the point of installation had been company practice for 20 years and that was that. When asked whose responsibility it was if anything was stained or damaged, we were told it was the installer’s. As well as this striking us as somewhat unfair to the sub contractors, our concerns had not been addressed and we were quite definitely still very worried.Luckily an employee at the Stow on the Wold showrooms heard of our dilemma and arranged for the chimney to be sprayed away from our home and it was eventually fitted as a pre-sprayed item. The fitting did result in a minor blemish but this was quickly and effectively dealt with by one swift spray of paint from the spray can which, whilst it certainly produced a pungent smell, was infinitely better for our furnishings and décor, not to mention the lungs of ourselves and installers alike.It seems to us a pity that the reputation of such a quality product was and still could be, jeopardised by an inappropriate aspect of its installation and the inflexibility of a senior company representative.
Stove expert replied:
Great to here that there was a way over this unfortunate problem and unfortunate response from this manufacturer.
Purchased this stove approximately 10 years ago when renovating an old pub to live in and it really is one of the best decisions we made when choosing between this and an AGA in our live-in
kitchen. We keep the fire in from Autumn through to Spring and never have a problem with it staying in over-night. Occasionally we cook stews in the oven with great results, and it really is the 'heart' of the kitchen.If I were to be really picky I would say the handle could be insulated so you don't need a glove to open the door and the top plate in the fire chamber is a little unforgiving if you allow the fire to over-heat when using coal - we get through one every couple of years and replace the fire bricks approximately every 3 years. This aside it is really well built and it is British.
Stove expert replied:
Great to hear of a British made success. Not bad on maintenance costs either, can't be bad!
the clearview oven is the best choice for us, we have had it nearly two years, and we have had two harsh winters, our central heating boiler broke down a while ago but we have not been in a
hurry to get a new boiler as yet. i love the oven and it makes great stews, which we have often, bought a stew pot specially. the stove is easy to light easy to control, burns wood or smokeless fuel, we often fill up for over night burn with the smokeless fuel and still going in the morning, the house is so much warmer then using the central heating. We would buy clearview again, we are so in love with it, we wouldnt have anything else. good idea of the other reviewer with the tin foil and magnets i will try that tip, and also the riddling mechanism sometimes can slip out but you just slot it back in the hole, and thats happened once.
Stove expert replied:
Be careful if using materials that reflect the heat near a stove as it can cause them to overheat and may then cause distortion of metal if air gap around the stove is not a good size to allow heat to radiate freely.
In a nut shell the Clearview stove we bought 3 years ago is probably one of the best investments that my wife and I have made. We ran an open fire for 7 years prior to getting the clear view
wood burner and wished we had got it sooner.We would guess that the clear view burner is using 25% less wood than the open fire and is giving out far more heat than the open fire, it's cleaner to run and we don't have a problem with dust any more plus it's got the added bonus that you don't have to worry about fire guards etc when you leave the propertyAll in all an excellent burner and I would certainly reccomend the Clear View.www.robinsreach.co.uk
Stove expert replied:
Clearview again comes up trumps, it does what it says it will. Good all round stove.
I've had this stove for 3+ years: it heats a 27ftx15 ft kitchen in an old stone house at about 1200 ft on a v exposed site. The kitchen has central heating, but we never turn it on. I use wood
during the day, and smokeless fuel at night to keep it in overnight: about 8-12 chunks of smokeless will do the job without gunging up the flu with tar from burning wood at low temp. I can boil a kettle, fry an egg or roast a chicken/make soup in the oven (I put aluminium foil over the opening with magnets to increase the temp). If not kept in overnight, it takes all of 2 mins to light in the morning, and fires up immediately. Only reason I gave the build 4 instead of 5 is that the riddling mechanism stopped working, but it's easy enough to just riddle it with a poker when necessary, which isn't by any means each day. All in all, great stove: would definitely buy again
