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.
