Today we are building a fire pit and I've got a lot of stuff to unload
from the truck because I bought a lot of different options.
So I can show you some of the different varieties
that are out there
between leveling options, different pavers and even fire inserts.
We're going to cover that all today.
I'm Brad from Fix This Build That, let's build something awesome
and we're here in my back yard
and I've done a lot of projects to make it look nice back here on the deck.
But we still are using a nasty old fire pit.
It's making a nice permanent stone.
Fire pit is going to be a great addition back here.
There's a lot of different things to consider.
I'm walking through all those with you,
and the first thing we're to start with is stone selection for stones.
You have a few options that you can get at the home center.
I went to Home Depot to pick up mine and I got this 12 inch retaining wall brick.
So if you're making a circular fire pit,
you're going to be looking for one that has this wedge shape to it.
This one is nice because it does have the flat sides on it,
but it does have this little lip on here, which is used for setting
back retaining wall.
So you might have to knock that off or it's not going to sit proper
in today's prices. These are coming in at $2.18 a brick.
So if you had a three tiered fire pit with 12 stones on each,
you're going to come up to right under $80.
Now, like I said, these are wedge shaped bricks.
And so if you put them edge to edge, they're going to naturally make a circle.
And so when I put these together, the retaining wall bricks,
it takes ten of them to make a circle if you put them edge to edge with no gaps.
And that's the look that we're going for.
So if you do that here with ten bricks, the opening becomes
right around 25 inches. Now, that is quite a bit smaller.
What we want, we want about a three foot firepit or maybe 30 inches.
So to get that, what we would have to do is back these up and open the gaps.
So as we do that, we would make room for the other
two bricks that we would need to make that size.
So adding in those two
this occasion are getting
excited about this fire pit now adding in these two extra stones.
That gets me to the measurement that I want, which is right around 33 inches.
But the problem is
when you add the stones in and widen them, now you have these gaps
here, and that's going to translate as we make the layers up.
Now, I don't want to do a top cap for these.
And so that means that we would have gaps on the top.
And personally, I just don't like that look.
And if you're okay with it, then that's fine.
Not that there's anything wrong with that. No, of course not.
Next up, we have what they call a wall stone.
And this is a tumbled brick look.
So it does have the flat edge on one side and it is tumbled and kind of
just organic on the rest of it.
Now, I like the looks of this one a lot better, but the downsides
of this one is with this roof top, it's a little bit harder to level.
And I found that out what I was doing retaining wall in the front yard.
I struggled mightily
shoot! this row is really kicking my butt, but they really look nice
and if they're on a firm foundation, you can make them work.
And these come in at $2.48.
So if you go with 36 of those will be right around $90.
Now, we're going to be going with this one
because I like the way that it stacks and the size of the circle it gives you
when everything is edge to edge. Let me show you what I mean.
So you can really see the differences side by side here,
all together with the 12 stones.
This one is about 33 inches, whereas ten stones and no gaps.
This one is closer to 25.
And I really like the look of the tight together stones.
So we're definitely going to go with this one.
One other option you do have to expanding a ring is using some spacer bricks.
But what you can do is use these spacer blocks and then as you
move them out, you can put the spacer in between.
And then now that's going to increase the overall diameter of your ring.
And also it's a nice little design feature,
but you'll have to find the stones that are the exact same height
as your other blocks are.
The next thing you need to think about is fire rings.
And I've got a few of them right here.
And to talking about the different options of why you might use
one versus the other,
you don't have to use a fire ring insert, but it's going to make your bricks
hold up longer and can also add to the look and the feel of your fire pit.
Now, the first one here,
this is a galvanized fire pit, and this one I am not going to recommend.
These are about $90 locally.
Now, the big downfall of these is one, it does not have a flange around the top.
So it's not going to sit over your bricks and kind of hold everything together.
And it is the tallest at about 12 inches, but you can kind of see
it is very misshapen.
So we're about 32 inches this way and 34 inches that way.
Now, these other two fire rings, these are your more traditional.
They have a flange on top
and they have some type of black powder coating to keep them from rusting.
Now, this one is a solid surface, so it looks really good
from negative video here.
I got this one locally.
This one was, I think $110.
And honestly, I like the look of this one the best because it does
have that one piece flange on top.
And actually they sell this in a kit at Lowes for $248.
You can get enough for three layers of the stones.
And this if you do the math,
they're ripping you off because you can buy this for 110
and all the stones, like I mentioned earlier, for 90.
So you get the whole thing for 200.
The problem is, is that it is pretty shallow.
So we're only about six inches here.
And so this is not really deep and you'd have to build up
the gravel underneath to continue to protect the bricks.
Now, on the other hand, I get this one.
This one was off of Amazon and this comes in a four piece kit.
I assembled this together with Bolt,
and you do have this break here where they come together.
So that is going to be a little bit of a lip.
And obviously it's just not as visually appealing as a solid ring.
But this one is ten inches tall and that's going to work really
well in our three layer fire pit.
Now, looking at how these fit the galvanized one is way too big.
Doesn't even fit down inside there.
Now the small ring fits perfectly in there.
And like I mentioned, they sell this in the kit.
So that's not surprising.
The one that we're going to be going with is the segmented one
with a nice flange lip on it, and that one sits down nicely.
There's a nice size
gap here in between
the brick and the insert, and that will be great
if you're going to be doing a smokeless fire pit.
Now, we're not doing a smokeless fire pit today,
but let me know down in the comments.
You'd be interested in seeing how that converts.
Now that we've got our materials picked out,
the next thing to consider is the location of your fire pit.
And the main consideration you want to have
is in between any structures in your deck or house or a fence.
And for us locally here, we need to be 15 feet off.
Typically, it's 10 to 20 feet depending upon your location.
Now for us, 15 feet lands right here, which is clearly in front of the fire pit.
We're actually going be going back just a little bit this way.
So we should be fine.
But not only where the fire pit is,
but think about where the seating is going to be.
So you're going to want to look at
five feet or so, six feet away from the fire pit, make sure that
the sit in the fire pit is about six feet away from any slope.
And that's going to make it a lot
better to sit around the fire and enjoy it and not tumble down the hill.
Now we can start placing and digging the fire pit.
So this is going to be right about here.
And you can mark the center and then do a outline with spray paint.
But I found an easier way to do
that is to just lay the bricks down around the fire pit.
So we'll go ahead and move these over.
Now, we can use the stone ring to define the edge, and I'm
going to use a flat shovel to do that and just go around and market.
Now, what we want to do is add a little bit of gravel on the outside of our ring.
If you didn't want to do that, you can just go straight up against these stones.
But what we're going to do
is we're going to add about a little three inch gravel line around the sides.
I'm going to use these little pavers around here
and just stack a few of them up and then just cut a line all around
and I'll move the stones around as I go.
Fast forward. This is day two.
That's because some rain came in right after we got through outlining this.
And now for the Tuesday edition of Rain, Rain Go Away.
But don't worry, you should
easily be able to get this done in one day as long as it doesn't rain.
Now, I'm going to go ahead, remove these stones and then dig out
2 to 3 inches here and a deeper hole in the middle,
which we're going to use for drainage.
And I'll show you more about that in a minute.
Now, before you start digging, you got to make sure you know
what is under the area where you're going to dig.
And a way to do that is by calling 811.
And today's sponsor is Georgia 811.
They want to remind us that there are utilities
that could be very shallow under your ground.
And so you want to make sure that you don't hit one of those.
You can cause an outage in your area.
Or worse, you could cause serious injury or even death.
So you can call 811 or you can go to your state's 811 website
that will coordinate with the public utilities
and have a locate technician
come out and we'll mark on your property where all the lines are at for us.
They were all on the side, so we are completely free to dig back here.
811 is a completely free service and Georgia 811 is trying to get out
the message. They also have free giveaways
on their site and this month
they're going to have five winners that get a $100 gift card.
I have a link down below
in the description where you can check it out
and you can enter every month into a new giveaway.
So just remember to call 811 before you do as a business put down
is not only going allow some drainage but is also level everything out.
So if your yard slugs, you don't want to just build your fire pit on top of it
and have those stones tumble over and not be really sturdy.
The other thing is for drainage, having 2 to 3 inches of paper base,
which is what I'm going to put in here, is going to allow some drainage.
But we've also got some clay soil in here that doesn't really drain well.
And so if you have something similar,
what you can do is dig a hole in the middle.
And I'm going to do about a 12 inch hole that's maybe 8 to 10 inches deep
and then backfill that with gravel
and to give the water more time to drain out and soak into the soil
before it floods out.
And you have just a fire pit filled with water.
I started digging the hole and I ended up running into a bunch of gravel,
so I'm not sure what they put back here when they're building the house.
But what I'm going to do
is just pour a bucket of water in here and we'll see how well it drains.
If it drains. Well, I'm just going to stop digging right now
because it looks like there's already a lot of rock down there.
And I guess that would help
if I had an actual measure to know how fast it should be draining or not.
The water is going down a bit, but it just soaking into the dirt
so it doesn't look like it's draining as fast as I thought it might.
So I'm just going to go ahead and keep digging,
apparently in a big pit of water. Now,
there's that clay, right?
Right under that gravel.
We had about six inches of hard packed clay and that's why it wasn't draining.
So this is really going to help out and I'm just going to put in some stones here.
So these are just river stones, which are really decorative,
but you can definitely use gravel in here if you can get it for cheaper.
This is about the cheapest thing that I could find at the home center.
I'm going to fill up the hole up to the top.
I was able to get a whole bag of rocks into that pit.
So I'm not going to tamp everything down and then we can move on to the paper. So
the next stage of the drainage and for the leveling,
I'm going to be using some paver base underneath.
Now this is what I've used on my retaining walls and on my pavers before.
This will work great to get a nice level, compact surface and it will drain
and so we can get some more drainage right down there into the pit.
And when you start getting close to the top,
you want to start screening it and leveling it a little bit.
I'm going to use this two by four
and I'll screen it a little bit and then tamp down,
and then we can start checking with the level
and see where we need to add things and make sure we're level all the way across.
I'm going to bring in the four foot level and we slope down this way.
So I'm imagining the size can be a little bit higher.
And as I look at that, it is.
So what I'm going to want to do is take the paper base up
so that it's even with the ground here on the shallow end.
And then that way will be a little bit buried here.
So it looks like I need to add another inch over here on this area
and we're actually pretty good here to make it level with the ground.
So I'm going to go ahead and do that tamped down
and then we'll move on to the bricks and it's running again.
Susan's up on the deck with the camera.
We've actually got sunshine and rain and shade all at the same time.
So this is what DIY projects are like, just so you know that
it's not all easy and fun.
We're going to press on as well.
Maybe do some filmmaking up there.
I'm going to keep going.
All right. The rain finally stopped and we are level now to check your level.
You can just go around since the circle
and just check it in different spots all around.
And if it's level, then you're good to go.
Also, you probably saw me using this, but getting a two by four.
It works great as a screen, so you don't just jack up your level,
but you can use that the screen
, put it on the level section, and then just kind of rotated around
in the areas that need to be lowered
and that will just distribute the paper base nice and easy.
So now I can start laying the paper stones and I'm starting
with my first layer and the tools I'm going to use are a dead blow mallet .
This is a lot better than just a regular rubber mallet
because it won't bounce off the brick as well as a couple of levels.
I won't use this on much.
A two foot level is a lot better because you've got more surface area now
because I rolled these bricks out to remove them, I'm
just going to roll them back in and they should be
in that same spot that I put them in before.
You can also put the firing in here
and build it around it, but I think this will work great.
So I'm just going to roll this one in back to where it was before.
Scooch it up. I'm going to put it
in the next one and then we can start leveling them off each other.
Since we've leveled everything
and these have a flat bottom, there should be a pretty straight forward
and hopefully they should be level already.
So this one is just a little high.
There we go. Then you can also check them from front to back
to make sure they're level.
These tumble stones, it's a bit harder because you've kind of
got a rough surface.
There's not a lot to focus on here.
There we go. As you're leveling these, you can just remove some of the paper
based underneath if it's a bit too high and add some if it's too low or.
As some get around to this last paper here, it doesn't quite fit in there.
So finally, to widen the circle a little bit here, and I'm just going to
adjust some of these, look for any gaps, and then I think we'll be okay.
And that is looking nice.
All right. Now the easy part. We just stack around the rest of them.
If the ring rings a little bit too tight, you can just adjust these out.
Sometimes you put them too much inside and then that last one won't fit.
So you can just adjust them outwards just a little bit and that'll make enough room
for the second row is lining up the middle in the seam underneath.
And so on the third row, we're going to just go back
and look at that seam down here and just mirror it for the top on it.
And then all the seams, the line up inner look a lot nicer.
I'm not using landscaping adhesive
to put these blocks together like I did with my retaining wall.
And that's mainly just because I do plan on coming back and adjusting this later,
because I think I'm going to be doing that smokeless fire pit.
You guys let me know down in the comments if you want to see me do that.
But I'm leaning that way, so I don't want to lock them
in, so I can't move them, so I'm just going to work around.
But these are a little wobbly on the top because we're stacking them
on top of this uneven surface.
But as soon as we get these in and I put the firing in, that's
going to help lock everything together, even if I don't use the adhesive.
I mean, this thing is turning out awesome.
Now, this is with three stones, right? About 12 inches high.
So you can see as far as the feel
that you need inside with that six inch ring,
you would need six inches of stone in there.
But with our ten inch ring, we'll only need two.
And that gives you more space for the fire.
So let's put the ring in and see what it looks like right now.
This fire ring is pretty heavy, so this is really going
to help lock together that top layer when I put it in.
So it's does a pretty decent job of contacting the Stones
and keeping them from moving.
And so that's going to help
when I don't have the landscaping adhesive in
and then going to fill in around the sides with the landscaping rocks,
I'm gonna use these same river pebbles here and his calico stone to go around
the side that matches what we have over there in the garden that.
But rocks inside there.
You can just use gravel or you can use pea gravel.
I'm going to use
some lava rocks here
because I think that'll give it a little bit more airflow
because they're really porous. I don't know.
Maybe not like the way they look and also really help with drainage.
I'm just going to fill this up until it reaches the bottom of the firing.
Let me give you a final cost breakdown and a few final thoughts
while I'm starting a fire.
One thing I would definitely do is mortar to get to the rocks
or some type of landscaping adhesive that's fire resistant
because these are just a little too wobbly.
I really wish I had a solid piece firing.
If I could find one that was 10 to 12 inches deep,
I would definitely upgrade to that one.
As far as the cost breakdown goes, we had $90 in the stones, another 85
for this insert.
We had six bags of the paper base, three bags with the landscaping stones,
and it two bags of the rocks were 11 bags total or an additional $55.
So all in we were able to do that for $230 before tax
and a day's worth of labor or two. If you count the rain you want.
Check out some more outdoor videos like how I redid my deck or this race garden.
I've got to play this queued up for you right there.
Now I think you're going to enjoy
I'll give big thinking to those folks have been joining the FTB de Builders Club
and until next time guys get out there and build something off.