It’s official- there’ll soon be another princess in the house. We just ordered the beautiful Pioneer Princess for our new home. We spent a good deal of time researching our options and finally settled on the Princess. It’s good value for the money, has excellent testimonials, and is not only solidly built but quite a beautiful piece of work. With up to 8 weeks lead time, we could be waiting until mid April for delivery but I’m already excited! 
pioneer princess
that’s a nice looking stove!
Thanks Heather. It’s a pretty exciting purchase!
Awesome! We’re kinda looking for a ‘hybrid’ stove of some kind. The spot in the kitchen is only a standard width so we’re still undecided. Now that the solar electric is up and running we’ve labeled all of our plug in appliances and realized an electric stove is just not gonna cut it! (3500watts for the oven and 1600watts/burner!)
What does this run on and what are the dimensions?
Oh and are you going to take Toby Hemenways 3day course in Calgary at the end of March?
It’s a traditional wood stove, apparently considerably more efficient than other models though. And we’re still experimenting with biofuels that may work in it. We fired up some cow patties in the rocket mass heater yesterday with “okay” results.
I didn’t even know about the upcoming course. Is there information somewhere online?
P.S. Expensive, but have you checked out the induction ovens/cook tops? We’re thinking of getting a two burner cook top…
http://www.vergepermaculture.ca/courses/toby-2012
Verge Permaculture in Calgary is bringing in a nice assortment of great teachers and courses this year!
Sweet! Keep us updated once you get it! One of the things I worry about in planning my little “cabin in the woods” is cooking, I like to do some intricate dishes occasionally, and worry about trying to keep a woodburning stove at a stable temperature.
I will write an update upon using it, definitely. I have the same concern even though I’m told that this model has good temperature control. I’d like an induction cook top in addition to the wood stove though…
I was wondering. Is there any reason you can’t cook right on top of the rocket stove? Don’t the tops get extremly hot? Also you could form a “lid” to make it an oven. Maybe another half barrel? Since you’ll burn it twice a day for heat you could use it to cook breakfast and dinner.
You could do (some) cooking on the mass heater barrel top, and if you had some sort of cover to hold in the heat that’d help it along. I’d be hesitant to go too far with cooking on it though, because the heat won’t be as high as I’d normally go for cooking. Draw being such a big issue with a mass heater of this size, the riser is positioned a little lower than I’d go if I’d been building a rocket stove. I’m still thinking of putting in one small rocket stove in the kitchen (for quick heating with minimal wood) but the riser will be higher and closer to the barrel top for a more focused, hotter spot on top.
She’s beautiful!
She is, isn’t she? Feeling pretty good about the purchase.
Wow, that’s a pricey stove. Congratulations, it looks like it will be worth the investment!
Thank you! Yep, it’s a bit of a hit at the onset but I think it’ll pay for itself many times over.