hi welcome back to garden ninja now today's
video guide is going to be showing you how you can make an
awesome fire pit in your garden as a focal point.
So come on let's get cracking!
Now you can make a fire pit pretty much out of any fire-resistant material.
Whether that be stone, concrete, compacted hardcore and gravel,
a metal bowl or even an old wheelbarrow! Now i'm going to show you today using an
old metal bowl rather than just use the bowl
and throw some logs in i'm going to amp it up! So i'm going to show you how you
can use other materials such as recycled rocks maybe some old
bricks to make a fire pit like no other. So come
on let's get cracking!
So you're going to need a few key bits of equipment before we start digging our
fire pit you're going to need some canes which
will allow you to mark out the sphere the circle where the fire pits
going to be dug you're also going to need a
tent peg which i'll show you more on that later.
I've got some lawn edging plastic here which is heavy duty stuff from Germany
that I've used around the garden which is great.
You can use metal you could use bricks on their edges
if you google lawn edging there's loads of different materials this is going to
keep the shape really neat. You're going to need some weed membrane.
A sharp spade like my golden spade here a pair of scissors, some string,
a wheelbarrow to lug everything around and then you're also going to need some
gravel and whatever rocks you're going to choose
to outline your fire pit.
Now i'm going to be designing a circular fire pit because what i find is that
with circles it encourages people to gather round
whereas a square or even a rectangular shaped fire pit
usually means that people will sit at either end and it's very formal. I want it to
be more relaxed and to encourage people
to come and sit together and have a good old natter!
So once you've found your true center pop your cane in.
Take another piece of string and tie it around the middle and tie it with a
double knot so that it's tight but it still moves round.
What we're going to do is we're going to measure the radius of
the circle that we need so i know i want a 1.5 meter diameter
circle which is the full width now the radius is half the width so half
of 150 is 75 so i'm going to use my tape
measure i'm going to measure out 75 centimeters from the cane.
I'm going to tie my tent peg around the end so i know that that's 75
centimeters and that's the diameter i want what i'm
going to do is use the temp peg to make markers around and pop canes in
until i get a full circle worth of canes. Once you've mapped out your circle it's
time to get your sharp spade and then lift the turf. So you want to
slice through the top of the turf and take
off an inch to an inch and a half and remove that turf
from the entire circle.
So I've lifted the turf and now I need to add the edging to make sure that this
the grass stays neat. So I'm going to pop in that plastic
edging but you could use metal or you could use upturned bricks set
into cement, it's entirely up to you.
I've just finished fitting the edging I've given it a rake to make sure it's
level and more importantly I've used the tent
peg to ensure that the end of that edging fits together we don't want it
pulling apart especially if you're using a plastic edging like I am.
If you're using metal as different pins if you're using
bricks on the side then you probably want to bed them into cement once that's
done. I'm now going to lay some weed membrane
to make sure that nothing starts to grow up from this
and then add a good inch or two of gravel which is going to be the heat
sink for the entire fire pit to make sure
that that hot bowl full of coals or wood is not going to harm the ground or
anyone near it it's going to help dissipate the heat from the bottom of
that fire pit.
Now for the fun part which is arranging the rocks in any way that you see fit
now you don't have to use real stone you could use old lumps of concrete or
anything that you've got left over this project's a really great example
where you can upcycle things and turn them into something brand new
rather than going to landfill.
So once you've got your metal bowl or you've been lid or whatever you're using
for your fire bowl in the center we need to make sure it's
level so i'm going to go and get a spirit level and a piece of wood and
thenIi will adjust the rocks underneath to provide enough support
so that this is level.
So me and Barry have just finished arranging the stone it was probably 95
percent me um five percent barry but what you can
see now is that the ball is really stable.
It also gives the illusion that it's floating on top of these rocks because
i've built up a platform in the middle of
old bricks and slates to give it a really sturdy base.
So whilst this is just a fire bowl you can buy online anywhere
what I've done with this design is elevate it. So rather than it's sitting
on a flag or just on a bit of gravel, I've taken it
and really tried to think about how we can make it
look really exciting and I think I've achieved that!
But we've still got lots of gaps haven't we barry around the fire pit that needs
filling in and I've got a number of bags of old
odds and subs of gravel and cobbles that I'm going to use.
So let's go and get those and then we'll fill in the gaps and show you the
finished article.
So I've just finished putting together the final touches this fire pit design
and I'm really impressed with it. I love the fact it's really brutal
I've been able to reuse all these existing materials and upcycle them and
it fits really well in this context of the garden
but fire pit is nothing without a small fire so i'm going to set this one off
sit back and enjoy a brew!
So there we have it my easy guide for upcycling materials you may already have
around your garden to create an amazing fire pit now this
steel fire pit could be an old dustbin lid it could be the bucket off an old
rusted wheelbarrow you can pretty much use anything but
hopefully this guide's showing you how you can take materials that you
already have and within about a day's worth of effort
you can create something that's absolutely fantastic so i'm going to sit
back with a cup of coffee and relax in front of my fire pit. If
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