How To Make a SMOKLESS Fire Pit [Full DIY Build]

what's up youtube i'm an average dad and this is the second video in the patio fire pit series where i'll be focusing on the smokeless aspect of the fire pit now this won't be 100 smokeless but it will definitely smoke less see what i did let's get to it [Music] [Music] why do you fire smoke to begin with well the answer is an incomplete combustion process so if you don't want your girlfriend or your mom to turn down your bonfire invite because then they'll have to wash their hair later okay if she takes out smoke she'll never recover then you'll want as efficient and complete combustion as possible how do we get more efficient combustion two things one have the fire burn hotter two create a secondary step that will burn off any smoke that is still created now i believe solo stove did this first with their portable steel fire pits the key to their design is having ventilation holes at the bottom which serve both of these two purposes one to feed fresh oxygen to the main fire and two feeding fresh air to the double wall channel where it will come out the secondary burn holes and push any smoke back towards the center having it burn up and thus disappear solo stoves end up heating the air so well in the double wall channel that sometimes it will actually ignite as it comes out the secondary burn holes creating some sweet flame fingers now what do you do if you don't want to shell almost 800 dollars for the full size portable fire pit well you do what your gosh darn sales on youtube this has been done most famously by hacksman and how to home both of these builds are only designed though to provide fresh air to the double wall channel or the secondary burn holes not the main fire thus missing out on an opportunity to make the fire burn hotter they both will push any smoke that is created back towards the center with those secondary burn holes and do both appear to be working fairly well but we're going to see if we can make a couple small improvements and at the end maybe just maybe get some flame fingers now it is worth mentioning real quick that how to home makes another video where he installs a ductwork air intake underground to feed fresh air to the fire thus accomplishing that first goal of having it burn hotter but this would be hard to implement with the flagstone patio that i built and just a lot more work so i didn't go this route in this design i'm going to remove bricks from the very bottom ring to feed the main fire and then i'll remove some other bricks from the fire pit surround to feed the double wall channel and then the secondary burn holes so we'll go ahead and jump into the build be sure to stick around to the end if you want to see some time lapse of with and without these smokeless features you can decide for yourself how well it works all right let's finally jump in all right so this is the insert i bought and i'll need to cut some secondary burn holes in that so i'm gonna start out with these three thirty second bits and then enlarge those with a quarter to three quarters inch step fit these are both from harbor freight so then on the insert i'm gonna go ahead and mark each hole an inch and a half on center with some painters tape and then make those initial holes with the 3 32 inch bit once i'm done with that first quarter i can go ahead and move the painters tape and do the next three sections so after those initial holes are drilled i'll go and use the step pick to make them larger if you have a corded drill or buy higher quality bits this process will be a lot quicker but the harbor freight ones it was a little bit slow i'll open up these holes to about half an inch once that's done i'm going to use this 3m fire block to seal off all the cracks and make sure the air exits through these secondary burn holes this ended up being a terrible product for this use but we'll get back to that in a second now the amazon reviews for this firepit insert said it rusted pretty easily and there's also bare steel exposed now where those holes were drilled so i'm gonna use this high temp black paint that's meant for engines and just give it a good coat now to feed the actual flame i'm going to remove these four bricks on the very bottom layer this layer will be half covered by sand and flagstone but will be partially exposed to allow fresh oxygen into the main fire and here you can see the gap between the insert and the stone surround and this is where air will travel and be heated up before it goes out those secondary burn holes so now to feed fresh air into that channel between the insert and the stones i'm gonna go ahead and remove these four bricks now back to the 3m fire block i went to put the insert back in i noticed that this had already cracked a bunch and was really crumbly actually cut myself on it pretty good after that so took it in the garage and decided to scrape all that off and replace it with a high temp silicone that i got off amazon in addition to replacing the 3m fire block i'm also going to put a ring of silicone around the top this will prevent air from leaking out where it otherwise would due to the overlap of the insert pieces when they come together so here's the high temp silicon i got on amazon it'll withstand intermittent temperatures at 600 degrees f and constant at 500. so there's that ring that'll help seal it in and i'll go into the other spots that have fire block so this is what it looks like when it's all done now you can see those sections where the pieces come together no longer will have a large gap where it sits high because that silicone will seal in spots in between so now i'll go ahead and put the insert back in place you can see in the finished state the lower bricks removed for feeding air to the main fire and then those upper ones removed to feed the secondary burn holes now at this stage there is still a large gap where air can go in between the bricks around and the inserts go up to the secondary burn holes but we don't want that we want it to come from those outside bricks that are removed so i'll fill those spots in later so now we got some wood in there we're ready to do a fire you can see here that the bricks have been placed under that firepit insert to better seal off that double wall channel i'll go ahead and light it with a torch now remember for this to work and it be smokeless it has to warm up and be burning very hot and also has to warm up so those secondary burn holes are pushing air back towards the center of the fire so the beginning here there will be some smoke but as it warms up it should theoretically clear up now as a rational person you may be wondering how much of this is really due to the smokeless features maybe this is just because the wood is really well seasoned well let's do a little experiment so i'm going to fill the intake holes on the fire pit with aluminum foil and then remove the black insert so that we can have a apples apples comparison on the same day same wood and try to see how well the smuggler's features work so now we'll go ahead and light it without the smokeless features and light it again because i didn't do a good so job we'll jump into a time lapse and you kind of see as the wind shifts a little bit fire heats up and i add extra wood it varies in the amount of smoke that is produced but there is consistently a decent amount of smoke that comes from the fire pit all right so now we'll compare it to the fire pit with these smokeless features same day same what first though i want to seal off the double wall channel a little bit better to do that i'll need a couple half bricks so i'm going to try to do this with a drill bit and chisel and realize that i'm an idiot i do have a diamond blade for my miter saw so once i got those cuts go back to the fire pit and see that i've installed them in places such as here and here i should seal off the double wall a little bit better and help the air heat up a little bit more i also enlarge the secondary burn holes to the next step on the step drill bit as well as making sure all the air channels putting these bricks on the bottom were clear as you can see in the first couple minutes it looks pretty similar to without the smokeless features does anyone smell anything smoky to quantify how warmed up the insert is i'm going to use my ir thermometer and take some measurements on the vertical walls you should also for reference tell me how close i am to exceeding the working limit of that silicone i will rearrange it every so often as if the smokeless features will work best if the wood is below those secondary burn holes you can start to see it producing a little bit less smoke as it gets warmed up now in this next temperature reading you can see i actually rotate my hand out of the way because it's radiating so much heat i'm talking a lot of heat like super hot like the only other setting on my grandma's oven besides off hotter than hale according to my dad and his brothers anyway now we look to be in the roughly three to four hundred range i reviewed the cost of the flystone patio in the firefit surround in the last video so i'll just quickly go through the smokeless feature costs in this one the actual insert was 96 the drill bits were 31 and the high temp silicone was 17 for a total of 144 so now you can really see the distortion from that rising heat but you can't see too much smoke escaping and it's measuring now roughly you know six to seven hundreds so now we're fully heated up with a similar amount of wood as the last fire and it does appear to be producing a lot less smoke and burning quite a bit hotter but before you go back and factor me on that here is a side-by-side comparison and time lapse then in real time and yes there will be some variants with this both will smoke a little more a little bit less at various times or situations but overall i'm pretty happy with how the project turned out as a whole i think it's a great upgrade and definitely adds to the enjoyment of our fire pit all right last but not least i did make an evening fire and this shot here perfectly depicts how the secondary burn holes work even if there's not flames coming out of them as you can see the smoke comes up from this partially lit log and then curls back in towards the husk by the fire where it will burn off and then disappear now as far as the coveted flame fingers there are a couple shots that look like the air is igniting as it exits those secondary burn holes so i'll cycle through those now it's definitely not a continuous thing like the solo stoves so i'm gonna keep tweaking the fire pit design may add a little bit more air intake or large in the secondary burn holes and i'll make another video if i improve upon this significantly but let me know down in the comments if you have any ideas on how i should improve it to get those flame fingers more consistently [Music] otherwise thanks for watching this did take me an obscene amount of time to shoot and edit as an average dad so if you enjoyed it please give it a like or consider subscribing and then come back next time where i turn an awkward nook in our basement into a sweet dry bar complete with a floating shelf or bottle displays with leds built in see ya [Music] holy go get me banded

Channel: AverageDad

Views: 81,375

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Id: jAuXghYD9aU

Length: 11min 35sec (695 seconds)

Published: Sun Jul 24 2022