In the 13 years we’ve owned our home, my wife and I have built three fire pits. The first was a rock ring in the woods, where we sat on boulders and invited armies of mosquitoes to mainline our blood while we pretended not to notice.
The second, in our scrubby side yard in suburban Connecticut, never saw flame but eventually hosted many interesting species of weeds and at least one tree.
Then I invested in bricks and a grate, building a pit 10 yards from our back deck, where it sat unused for two years before I kicked it down.
What would it take to inspire an outdoorsy family of fire lovers to actually use a fire pit?
Last week, I figured I’d find out. I called on John Gulland, manager and founder of Woodheat.org; Scott Cohen, author of “Scott Cohen’s Outdoor Fireplaces and Fire Pits”; and Julie Moir Messervy, a Vermont-based landscape designer and author of eight books on the subject, including “Landscaping Ideas That Work.”
My landscaping specialists got right to the heart of it: A successful fire pit is about a lot more than just the fire.
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To Build a Fire Pit
Here’s what you’ll need.
“The goal is to create a go-to destination where you can chitchat with your friends,” Mr. Cohen said. “Fire just helps prolong the use of the area.”
In designing the space, Ms. Messervy suggested I start by selecting a proper site. My impulse was to put the pit on the slope behind a patio I installed in June. The patio’s retaining wall, I figured, would make a passable bench for the fire pit.
Ms. Messervy felt this would crowd the patio and, worse still, force me to dig tons of soil to level the ground. Having dug myself to the edge of insanity when I was building the patio, I took her advice and chose a spot on a plateau a few yards away. In playing with designs and layouts, I relied on Ms. Messervy’s Home Outside Palette mobile app, which was useful (and free).
Next, I checked Houzz.com, which offered its usual trove of over-the-top design ideas. The one I liked best was round and patio-like, with a floor of river rock wide enough to accommodate six people and a low, modest fire pit at the center.
Among other ambitions, I planned to build a top for the pit, so we could use it as a table during daytime gatherings. So why not build a gigantic pit?
Big pits, Mr. Gulland informed me, don’t reflect heat as effectively as smaller ones, so the wood burns less efficiently and produces more smoke. “Anything bigger than 36 inches in diameter is a waste,” he said. But I went with a slightly bigger version, for reasons I’ll explain shortly.
I chose a loose-rock floor because the thought of building another patio turned my stomach. With loose rock, you still have to remove a layer of topsoil, but you don’t need to dig as deep as you do when installing pavers, or stabilize the base with compacted gravel.
To set the pit on solid ground and prevent shifting during the winter, though, I had little choice but to follow my paver-patio protocol. I dug a four-foot-wide circular trench roughly eight inches deep and filled it with so-called stone aggregate, which is a mixture of sand and gravel found at masonry suppliers.
Working in two-inch layers, I tamped down the gravel and checked it for level, giving it the slightest slope so the water wouldn’t pool around the pit. Next, I added a one-inch layer of sand to set the bricks.
Sounds easy? Now imagine filling a shovel with dense soil too many times to count, hoisting it all into a wheelbarrow and hauling those monstrous loads to some dark corner of your property. Then imagine filling the wheelbarrow with gravel multiple times, raking it out and slamming a tamper onto it to get it flat.
For your next act, lay down some landscaping fabric and then enjoy carting nearly a ton of river rock and fire pit bricks from your driveway to your yard. All of this for a little patch of heaven 12 feet in diameter.
Do yourself a favor and break up the job into two days at the minimum — and, if possible, recruit a few muscular masochists to help.
One logistical, budgetary note: I had gravel and sand left over from my patio project, so I didn’t need to pick it up or have it delivered. My local supplier charges $100 for delivery, so the material itself would have cost less than the delivery. But if you’ve ever tried to haul a ton of rocks on your own, you are likely to recognize this as the immeasurable bargain it is.
One of my best moves was starting with a kit. Pavestone’s RumbleStone round kit costs around $400, delivered, and includes a pit liner and screen. The company sells a 46-inch-diameter, 16-inch-high version, but my sources said 12 inches is a good height if you like to kick your feet up on the edge. (The kit itself comes in a 10.5-inch version.)
Even the smaller kit costs considerably more than you would pay for bricks. Then again, for the extra cash, you don’t have to melt your brain while cobbling together stones or bricks into a perfect circle. (Do-it-yourself masons, Mr. Cohen said, should avoid using river rocks, as they can explode when heated. And homemade pits, he said, should be lined with fire bricks.)
The RumbleStone liner would require some modification for a propane fire pit, but that didn’t apply to me as I decided to use a wood-fire design. Of course, not everyone has that choice. Cities like New York and Boston, among others, prohibit open fires with wood, and smaller municipalities sometimes regulate fire pit placement to keep smoke away from the neighbors.
Gas fire pits can be great, too, if you take some precautions with materials. Mr. Cohen, who provides expert testimony in fire-related court cases, said lava rock is a wise choice for propane fire pits. Glass beads also work nicely, he said, but only if they are manufactured specifically for such uses.
“For safety, you want to cover your gas ring with just an inch or two of media,” he said, referring to the material that surrounds the gas flame. “If you have too much material, the gas will flow to the edges and light sporadically.”
Sporadic lighting, he said, can be especially dangerous if the flames surge when they catch.
Mr. Cohen said he buys supplies from Hearth Products Controls, and he favors stainless-steel gas rings with manual lighting. With such units, he said, users are better able to tailor the flame height to the wind conditions and other factors, like the presence of small children in the crowd.
And wind conditions are too often overlooked by fire pit owners, Mr. Gulland said: “People don’t know how to burn properly, which creates a ton of smoke, and they’ll burn when there’s a breeze, which makes it really bad.”
He favors so-called top-down fires, where kindling rests on the wood logs, because they produce much less smoke than traditional American campfire methods.
I forgot his advice during our first fire, but fortunately there was no wind. When my pit and the surrounding patio were finally finished, I slid a few chairs around it and collapsed in a heap on a couch inside. The kids took one look and immediately demanded marshmallows.
An hour later, the stars were out, the neighborhood was quiet and the fire had gathered the family to it. As we sat, I remembered what Ms. Messervy said about the value of this venture.
“It’s amazing what happens to a conversation when people have fire as a focal point,” she told me. “It absorbs your self-consciousness and allows people to literally get into a place that’s warm, and you can enjoy conversations in a deeper way.”
Along with a few s’mores and a cold beer, it was enough to justify all the sweat this little bear of a project required.