- Hey Snowys fam, it's Lauren here
with the BioLite FirePit plus.
I'm gonna run through it and show you how it works.
We got a portable power pack for charging devices
and for powering the efficient air flow system.
It also has the versatility of not only a comfort fire,
but cooking as well.
So, this is your fire pit when it comes out of the box.
Now, obviously this one is our display one or our demo one,
and it's been cranked up a couple of times.
So, it's not as shiny as yours will be.
It's also had the handles attached,
which is what you'll screw on as well,
when it's fresh out of the box.
Now, all the componentry here
will stash into the body of the fire pit
and when it's all packed up,
it is 70 centimetres long by about 30 centimetres wide,
and just under 30 centimetres tall.
Now, to get your fire pit set up,
we've got legs underneath the bottom here, which fold away.
So, we're just gonna swing those ones out
and on the outside here,
which we'll be able to see on this leg,
it's got a little, a little knob, I guess,
or button that pops out
and locks them into place, similar to your older,
older style vacuum tubes and do this side as well.
Now, once all four of those legs are set up,
the next component we've got here is our little fire grate.
Now, this is quite a nifty little grate
because you've got a couple of options with how you use it.
It sits into the bottom of the fire pit,
right down the bottom there like so, but alternatively,
you have on both ends here, some little hooks,
which will allow you to lift up this grill
and hang it from either end, which raises your grill up.
So, this is ideal for if you wanna be cooking
or using this as a barbecue,
you might have charcoal or heat beads
or something like that.
So, talking about using it as a barbecue or cooking,
the next component that we've got is our grill.
So, this one here will slide along the top, like so,
we've got a couple of, on the bottom here,
these little, little wire tabs there,
and they will sit inside the fire pit like so,
and then this little bar underneath will stop it
from being able to, to pull right off.
So, this one just slides across the top of the fire pit
and open again,
and the third and final component is our power pack,
our battery component.
This one here also has the fan.
So, I'm gonna run through the specifications
of that a bit later on,
but we've got these two little metal tabs here
and a third one at the top.
These just hook onto the bottom two tabs
on the body of the fire pit,
and then this clicks in, up the top here,
and as you can see, when that's in place,
I'll remove this to show you again,
you've got this little seal,
a square seal here where the fan air comes out
and we've got the corresponding square there
on the body of the fire pit.
So, when we're attaching it,
they will just butt up against each other
and create a nice firm seal.
So, all in all your FirePit weighs about nine kilos,
and when it's fully set up,
it's just under 75 centimetres long
with additional lengths on the battery pack here.
It's still 30 centimetres deep,
but it's raised itself up to 48 centimetres
or just under 50 centimetres tall
with this grill plate on here as well.
The materials are steel componentry,
and also we've got this x-ray mesh that goes around the body
and the end of the fire pit here,
it gives you like a really nice field of vision of the fire.
That's one of the things that's been upgraded
from the original FirePit to the FirePit plus,
is they've enlarged this x-ray mash, mesh here,
and the whole fire pit body
is a high temperature powder-coated enamel,
which is also an upgrade on the previous model,
which was known to have some rusting
and a deterioration of that coating
where that's not an issue in this new model.
We've also got this battery pack on the end here,
which is, is plastic, essentially.
Now, what I'm gonna do is get a fire set up
and cranking in the fire pit, and whilst that's going,
I'm gonna run you through the specs of the battery
and air flow pack.
So, there's a couple of things to consider when you are
loading up the wood for your fire pit.
The first one being that it's recommended you don't exceed
timber longer than 40 centimetres.
So, it fits nicely into the body of the fire pit,
as well as, as you can see here, this top row of holes.
I'll talk about that in a little bit.
We wanna make sure our wood is not exceeding
the height of that as well.
That way we know it's gonna burn super efficiently.
Now, I have got my little trusty blow torch here
for ease of getting this fire started,
and in the bottom I've used, also used,
what's called fat wood.
I'm not sure if you're familiar with that.
It's essentially just a timber
that's really high in natural oil.
So, it will kindle really quickly.
Downside of that though is often it will pump out
some black smoke.
Now, whilst I've got the fire kicking off.
Now, I'm just gonna turn this button on,
on the side to get the fan going and get that air flow
just to support the establishment of that fire.
As you can see that little orange light there,
and I'm gonna wait for that sort of fat wood
to burn down a bit and get rid of that black smoke.
So, this battery pack on the end here
can be charged via USB before your trip.
It's got a 13,000 milliamp port,
12,800 milliamp power battery pack inside of it.
So there's plenty of power in there to fan
or to fuel the fan, to power the fan,
I should say for your fire,
but it's also, as you can see here under this tab,
it's got a USB output,
which will allow you to charge your mobile phone
or possibly even USB rechargeable cameras,
lighting, anything like that.
All of the other BioLite accessories as well,
are compatible to be charged with this unit
through their ecosystem.
So essentially, we've got, as I said, this,
the battery inside this power pack here,
which gives you the option of portable power,
but what that also does is it powers a fan,
which I mentioned before that forces air into the fire pit
and helps you to control the efficiency of your fire pit
and, and how it's burning.
Now on the inside of the fire pit here,
along both sides on the top here,
you can see a tube with holes in it,
and there's also a tube that runs down the centre,
that's also surrounded with air holes.
Basically what that's doing is
depending on the speed of your fan,
that's forcing air into the body of the fire pit
and obviously oxygenating it
and creating a really healthy environment
for that fire to burn.
Now, the benefits of this are twofold.
One, it allows you to get your fire started
really easily by pumping that oxygen through,
especially when it's just often, you know,
when you're out camping or you've,
you've got your back pergola,
you needing lots of fire and lots of kindling
and things like that to get the fire going.
Definitely not the case with the BioLite FirePit.
It also means that you can, like over the weekend,
for example, when I was using the FirePit,
just to get to know it a little bit better,
putting a couple of logs on and things like that,
the fire slowed down a little bit.
It started to smoulder.
We'd put a log on that possibly was a little bit too big.
All we needed to do was crank up the fan,
which pumped more oxygen in
and increase the intensity of that fire
and got that log going and had a lot larger heat output
and a lot more of an efficient burn as well.
So, remember at the beginning,
when I was loading up the fire pit,
I was discussing how it's important not to exceed
that level of air holes in the top there,
that's just to make sure that
you don't have any active fuel
and fire burning above those air outlets
and the fan circulation and air circulation
that's happening within the fire pit is really efficient.
It also allows for there to be,
what is called a secondary combustion, essentially,
and that means that any smoke that's escaping,
that your FirePit will have that additional air flow
and allow it to re-combust.
Essentially, smoke is a unburnt fuel, essentially.
So, basically when that, that airflow starts
and the airflow starts to happen around that FirePit,
it's creating that secondary combustion there,
and it's allowing that smoke to reignite
and really drastically reducing the overall smoke output
of your FirePit.
So, when it comes to actually controlling the fan
on your unit, we've got a couple of little indicators here.
The first one is the battery.
So, that will let you know how full
your power unit actually is.
Obviously, as you're using your fan over time,
or you're charging other devices,
that's going to drop down.
The actual fan speed indicator is our second one
up the top here.
So, we have our first little indicator,
which means our fan is, is on the first speed.
Now, if we press that one again,
it should cycle through to the second speed,
and as we're doing this also,
you might be able to hear the sound of the fan
is actually becoming noisier as well.
(fan buzzing)
That's on the third speed.
(fan buzzing)
That's on the fourth and highest speed,
which as you can hear is actually quite noisy,
and then pressing that drops the fan speed
all the way back down,
and then pressing and holding for three seconds,
turns the fan off.
So, your fully charged power or air flow unit,
will give you 30 hours of fan time on low,
around 14 hours on medium and about seven hours on high.
So, my observations from using this FirePit
over the course of the weekend
is that it's actually quite a nifty little unit.
I think it does have limitations for you if the kind of fire
that you like to have when you're out and about camping
and doing those kinds of adventures is,
is maybe a little bit larger or you're actively cooking on
it for a large group or family or things like that.
I think the fire pit more ideally
is suited to a lifestyle situation.
It's perfect for your back patio, veranda,
perfect for maybe caravaners or camper trailer uses
or people who just wanna get out and about
away for the weekend.
One thing that I will mention though, is,
is I did have personally a bit of trouble
trying to activate that smokeless feature
or that second combustion,
and I think upon reflection,
the reason why that was is because the wood that we had in
the fireplace was exceeding that air row.
We didn't have the right sized wood
and we'd only taken a certain type of wood away with us
and didn't have the ability to cut it down smaller.
The fact that you can control the air flow
around your fire though,
and allow it to burn hotter or more efficiently
is a massive plus.
If you're prepared, you're taking limited wood with you,
it's all a nice right size,
that's, it's a definite win.
The other option that you've got with controlling the,
the heat and the, the overall flame output
and things like that from a cooking perspective
is also pretty nifty as well.
It's almost comparable to
how you may control a gas barbecue.
So, that's about it for the BioLite FirePit plus.
You can get this at snowys.com.au
at our lowest prices every day.
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Catch ya later Snowys fam.
(upbeat music)