There are few things as relaxing as a warm fire on a cool evening. Here's a
quick and easy way to enjoy that time tonight. We built this fire pit—from the
hole in the ground to the weenie roast—in a mere six hours. But before you
begin, we have a few thoughts:
STONES. We built this fire pit from landscaping blocks. You can use field
stone or other materials too. Do not use stones that have been submerged in
water; they can explode with the heat of the fire. Concrete blocks may
deteriorate from the heat, but they are cheap to replace.
DRAINAGE. In the bottom center of the pit, we dug a fencepost-sized hole 2
feet deep and filled it with gravel. The hole works like a sump, helping to
drain rainwater.
ADHESIVES. We dry-stacked the stone. It's a quicker way to build the fire pit.
If you have to replace cracked or broken stones, dry-stacking makes that job
easier as well. If you want to cement the courses, lay cement down only on the
outside half of the stones to protect the cement from the heat. Adhesives may
melt and give off fumes; we advise against using them.
SAFETY. This fire pit is built in a wooded area. Before we started the fire,
we soaked the area around the pit with water. We also had 5-gallon buckets of
water and a shovel handy to put out any stray fires.
STEP 1
We dug a hole 2 feet wider than the fire pit—about 7 feet across. Make the hole
round by hammering a stake into the center of your fire pit area. Loop a
3½-inch length of string over the stake and mark the circle. Dig out 12 inches
of soil. Shovel in 4 inches of gravel and 4 inches of sand. Tamp that layer
flat. Onto that base lay down the base course of blocks. Make sure this course
is level in all directions. Fill the space outside the blocks with gravel. This
nearly buries the first course, making the stone base strong.
STEP 2
Lay additional courses of stone. We used the steel ring that will hold the grill
in place to ensure each course is round and of the correct diameter. We
purchased the ring from a garden supply store. To keep the courses perpendicular
to each other and to the ground, hang a piece of string over the edge of the
top-most course. When each course touches this string—and the string is touching
the base course—all the courses are roughly perpendicular. The middle of our pit
was 32 inches in diameter.
STEP 3
Use a brush to clean debris from the surface of the previous layer. Overlap the
layers of stone, leaving three or four random gaps between stones in every
course. The gaps (see previous page) allow the fire to draw air into itself. We
dry-stacked the stone. They may get out of alignment, but realignment is easy.
We learned something the hard way: Put gravel into the center of the fire pit
after you've stacked a couple of courses. Then spread it evenly when you're
finished. We shoveled the gravel into the pit after it was completed and found
lifting the gravel that high was unnecessary work.
STEP 4
Before you lay the final course of stone, set the steel ring in place. Then add
the final layer of stone onto the lip of the ring. As originally built, the fire
pit was seven layers tall—each layer took 14 stones—and about 25 inches
tall. But we have found that the fires burn even better once we removed one
layer of stone.
