I Built A Smokeless Fire Pit With Foam And Concrete That Actually Works

you know what I love it's sitting around a fire pit with your family but you know what can really ruin it is smoke and I'm going to fix that and I did three years ago when I built this the first DIY smokeless fire pit built on YouTube but I don't like it anymore so I'm going to remake it just like the Romans would using concrete welcome to Hackman y'all originally I was going to build the concrete form for this fire pit out of wood but then it hit me but then it hit not Everyone likes working with wood and I'd feel obligated to store a big wooden form for years to come well I can build this out of XPS foam and freely throw it away when I'm finished I know that I'm going to be 16 in tall but I need the circumference my diameter is 52 in I multiply that time Pi which is 3.14 I come up to 163 and 1/4 in these pieces are 96 in long- 96 in 67 and a/4 so I'm going to need to attach one 96 in piece and one 67 and 1/4 in piece I went ahead and cut off this extra piece that I'm going to use kind of as a mending plate you could call it uh whenever I did the original smokeless fire pit when I built the forms for the top I used regular spray contact adhesive and you have to be very careful because it'll eat this foam but since then I have found this 3M 78 and it is specifically for on polystyrene foam and it works like a champ I used it whenever I built the camper so that's what we're going to use if your foam sheets have that clear plastic sheathing on top of it make sure you pull that off like I did earlier otherwise that's going to you know affect how well this holds I think it probably would have been a good idea if I'd have actually tried this and found out if it actually worked before I just decided to start filming but hey you're on this ride along with me is it going to work I have no idea just like regular contact cement by the way you just have to let each piece that you've sprayed dry to become slightly tacky and then you can put them together I did that backwards luckily I was able to take it back apart and flip it around to get everything on the right side now just need to add an extra layer around the outside for extra strength and the good thing is after that big mishap surely we're done having problems and it should be smooth sailing surely after that mishap we should have no more problems and it should be smooth sailing thanks to my tbec tape use duct tape if you like it finally dawned on me whenever I realized hey I've got to actually make a smaller Circle to fit inside that big one and if I had a problem with that how am I going to get this one to work heat my friend heat is the answer by using the heat gun I was able to make this Bend and actually hold it shap shoot y'all better a red neckar rise you didn't think it would work please I mean it's amazing what some ratchet straps will do for you and ain't going nowhere is it going to last throughout the entire process these are going to be my air holes and these are 2in pipe I actually thought this all out and I I bought check it out I went out and bought a brand new hole saw so I could pass the pipe through nice and easy and then I like an idiot put the ratchet straps on before so they're just wedged in there but they'll be fine I've also driven some pieces of rebar down and some wooden staks to help keep the circle shape I leveled everything up then drove Stakes around the outside of the perimeter Circle so I'm on the inside on the inside Perimeter outside on the outside now I'm driving some rebar staks in to add strength to the fire pit itself this bottle is filled with vegetable oil and this is going to be my release agent look at all that concrete my back is just screaming with anticipation except today Old Uncle Hax has a trick up his sleeve feel free to mix this by hand or use you know one of those traditional little small cement mixers but I got to tell you this Mud Mixer is freaking amazing Mud Mixer claims that their machine is twice as fast as mixing by hand I think they're full of baloney because this thing easily is four times as fast it looks like it's coming out of there slow and you think how could that possibly work well but you can barely keep up with it this thing saved us an incredible amount of time combined with a strong wife you can tackle just about any project you'd want with this thing I am I mean I it's probably one of my favorite tools that I've gotten over the last several years it's powered by an electric motor so I just brought a battery Bank out and plugged it into that to make things super simple all you do is drop the bags in the top the Mud Mixer mixes it automatically it's got a built-in hose so I can rinse my hands off rinse the Mud Mixer off when the project was done and hey if you're interested I'll put a link in the description for Mud Mixer I don't have an affiliate link but they did send me this machine so thanks to them I got lots of concrete projects coming up I use a sawall or a reciprocating saw if you're fancy pinkies up everybody to vibrate the concrete and get the bubbles to the top before going any further let's touch on some vital elements crucial for smokeless fire pit success a fire has specific needs fuel and oxygen in the case of a fire pit wood serves as the fuel but why do you get the smoke have you ever seen a vehicle blowing thick black smoke out the exhaust well that happens when the fuel to air ratio is off balance the engine is getting too much fuel and not enough air and so the black smoke coming out the exhaust is unburned fuel similarly a fire pit produces smoke due to incomplete combustion a smokeless fire pit operates differently however featuring an outer chamber that allows fresh air to enter from the low exterior holes and become superheated as it ascends now the hot air escapes through the top holes around the upper perimeter of the smokeless fire pit that creates a secondary burn that consumes the unburned fuel or smoke now the holes at the bottom also let air in to feed the fire now one component most people Miss is the top ring which directs air flow over the fire and I addressed that in my video three years ago so we want to make sure that we pay attention to all of those aspects to make sure that we have the most successful smokeless fire pit experience this is the fire pit ring I'm going to be using it's the same type I used three years ago on the first smokeless fire pit build I like this one for a few reasons it's the cheapest one you can get it's 12 in tall as opposed to a lot of them are 10 in tall and it's it's got this you know this ring around the top that starts to create that upper ring that Rim like I talked about earlier it does cost 30% more than it did 3 years ago but concrete is twice as expensive as it was 3 years ago so I guess that's not terrible I don't know what you call these things a soft tape measure a flexible tape I don't know it's what I'm using and I'm going to Mark out every 3 in around the top of this fire pit where I want to drill a hole now I showed you a few years ago if you don't have one of these flexible tapes that you can actually just wrap blue tape around the fire ring take it off and then make all of your measurements on there then you can reattach the tape back to the fire pit ring and you'll have exactly where you want each hole drilled which is going to be a 1 and8 inch hole and I'm using this Milwaukee step bit I love these step bits for this and the Milwaukee ones just work the best they stay sharp the longest to me kind of nervous about taking it off CU I'm not sure if I I vibrated it enough to uh to really fill it all in really good it's one of those things that hits you at like 3:00 in the morning did I do that right am I smart enough am I good enough oh dude no I did not my feels have not been a slaved oh man all right you can see right here where the mix was too dry and that's my fault because I didn't want it to have too much water the worst thing you can do to concrete is put too much water in it so I was trying to leave it dry but then I didn't agitate it enough to to get it to come together to where the whole thing would be kind of smooth like it is up here the good thing is that's the look that Kim wants she wants that aged look right Kim yeah I like the AG look okay but you know so there's your lesson make sure that you vibrate the concrete really well however I can still take some concrete and smooth over this and it should turn out just fine I'm going to make the top molds out of this XPS foam as well you see here I've made a compass which is just a straight piece of wood I've drilled a hole out for a nail and then my two diameters are going to be 53 and 1/2 28 1/2 so my two radiuses are 26 and 3/4 and 14 and 1/4 in away from that nail I drew this Square out I've got it here on this corner this is just the way I like to do it that way I've got a perfectly Square corner to work from for the base of these molds I used inch and a half thick XPS foam when I did it in the past I used the/ in just like I'm going to use for the sides and it works perfectly fine I just thought this would give it some extra strength now I'm cutting out 4 in tall pieces to wrap around the sides and that's because I want these to be 2 and 1/2 in thick overall as you see once again I've just applied the 3 m78 adhesive to each piece let it dry and I've just got to assemble everything now and cut it square I use some quick set caulk on the corners just to make sure that you know none of the water runs out from the concrete and to make the corners a little more rounded if you want a smooth finish skip this step but this is a trick we used to use when I worked in the pre-cast concrete business like 25 years ago you take some baking soda add some water to it crumble It Up Mix it and you want it to be where it'll fall apart but it still sticks together really well and then bring out your inner chimpanzee just go crazy I think they like to throw underhanded but you know you do what works for you you do want to make sure that when it hits this that it splatters a little bit you just don't want clumps you want kind of a snow look for some added strength I'd like to add some rebar to this but I don't want to put halfin rebar and nobody near me sold quarin rebar so I just went and bought some quarter inch all thread and this stuff bends pretty easy so I'm going to actually bend it to the shape and then I'll just cut it with these bolt cutters and that'll just lay right in there it's been raining for a few days but I finally got a break in the rain and I'm going to pour these on our back porch in case it starts raining again much to Kim's dismay unfortunately that means I got to go old school on this no Mud Mixer I am the Mud Mixer take that thank you now if you did use the baking soda method make sure you don't just throw the concrete mix down in here you want to lay it down on top of the baking soda and then you want to gently smush it down yeah smush gently gently smos work it into those Corners okay not like you did on the fire pit genius with the form filled halfway up I went ahead and added the all thread not to be confused with the all spark which brings Transformers to life while I had some concrete mixed I went ahead and took some extra out in a little container and filled in these spots that were bad on the fire pit that I didn't have the concrete wet enough on it's great if you can use this without any aggregate in it but obviously when you buy the mix it's going to have the aggregate in it but no big deal I just rubbed it on there and then I took a damp sponge just kind of how you would work with tile and uh and went over it and when it dries it'll look just the same as the rest pretty much close enough 24 hours later you should really let these set for 2 days in the mold before trying to take take them out but you know the tube I got to do it for the tube what can I say I got to get these things out oh so you know what I didn't put I forgot to put the vegetable I forgot to put the vegetable oil on it too don't forget your vegetable oil don't eat that mess though it's bad for you man I can't believe I did that turally totally forgot could be here a while now of course the real reason why I did it this way was because I like to show you what not to do I think I think that's the best way to teach really you know is by if I if I intentionally screw up and I show you what you don't want to do I mean I think that helps you you know I do this because I care and and because I'm stupid three hour little I've had some pretty good brain farts in my time some real stinkers this this might be one of my top five right here forgetting to put the mold release AKA vegie table oil in these molds however they came out eventually now I'm just rinsing them off and getting the styrofoam [Music] off with everything dry I can go ahead and start assembling the whole fire pit now I'm not actually leveling anything up here I'm just making sure that the inner ring is level with the outer ring later I'm going to go ahead and stain this entire fire fire pit but for now I just want to get it put together and test everything out now whenever you use one of these smokeless fire pits it's important that you get it very hot and get the sides hot if you build a tiny little fire in this it is not going to work after about 15 to 20 minutes the sides are good and hot and it's working as it should and you'll notice I've got a lot of wood in there I built a monster fire in here do not build a tiny fire guys I'm not done with this fire pit yet and I've got even bigger plans for this entire fire pit patio I'll put that video right here when it comes out but until then something equally as amazing will go there now I just got to figure out where I can store this hate to throw it away [Music]

Channel: HAXMAN

Views: 787,990

Keywords: backyard fire pit, diy fire pit, diy smokeless fire pit, smokeless fire pit, how to make a fire pit, smokeless fire pit build, fire pit, how to make a smokeless fire pit, fire pit build, diy concrete fire pit, diy fire pit on concrete patio, smokeless fire pit how it works, how to

Id: h8krB1vlfEg

Length: 17min 23sec (1043 seconds)

Published: Thu May 16 2024