Whoa, whoa, whoa, oh, there it goes. Look at that. That's been sucked in there after I built this DIY fire pit. You guys told me
you wanted to see a smokeless version. Now, there are a ton of different
videos out there, and they use a lot
of different techniques, so I don't really know
which one is the best. And today we're going to find out. So here's the basic firepit that I made,
and it looks great, but there's no air openings around the sides. All the air for the flame
has to come in from the top. Went ahead and got a good fire going here. And you can see the smoke is rising up
and the biggest issue with smoke is trying to avoid it. And it seems like no matter where you go,
the smoke is always in your face. I think what we need to do now is bust out
the smoke bombs. These are actually smoke and mirrors
that are used to test for air leaks in HVAC systems. And I just taped one to the end of a dowel
and I'm going to light this thing up and move it around the fire
to see how the air gets pulled in for combustion there for the fire. I've never used these before, so I have no idea how much this is going
to smoke or what it's going to do. So let's find out. All right. I'm going
to light this thing up. This thing's going
like spark or what? Oh, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. All right, let's see. Where the smoke is being pulled in. So it's not being pulled in at all
into the sides here. There you can see it's really getting
sucked down in there from that top edge. But right there, that's
where it's getting the airflow from. All right. Well, that was kind of cool. So I want to convert my fire pit
into a smokeless fire pit design. They actually sell commercial versions
of smokeless fire pits, and the most popular version
is the solo stove. Well, let me show you exactly how that
works and looks on the commercial version. And then we can look at how I'm going
to do the alterations to my own fire pit. The way the solo stove works is it's
kind of like an insulated coffee mug. So there's actually an outer liner here,
and then there is also an inner layer where the fire goes,
and that leaves this space in between where the air can flow,
except instead of it being a vacuum, like in your coffee mug, it's going to be open
so that air can flow through it. So air comes in through these sets of holes right here,
and then they show this on the picture and most of it goes in here in the bottom
and goes up to the firewood. And that just is the primary ignition
and spurs the fire. But at the same time, some of that air
is going to flow up this chamber. And as it's going up,
it's going to get heated and then it's going to come out
of these series of holes up here, and that is going to provide
air flow to the top of the fire. Now, of course, the fire pit
that I've built looks nothing like that. And it has a primary base of stone,
and then we have a steel insert fire ring. So the first thing we're going to do is remove some of those bricks
around the bottom, and that's going to allow the cold air
to come in, just like on the solo stove. Now, some air will then come in straight
from the bottom up into the firebox, and then the rest of it
is going to be coming up here. But we need a place for it
to come out at the top. So we need some of those holes. But the question is, do we want big holes,
small holes or maybe medium size holes? And I don't know the answer to that. So that's all we're going to test
and find out today. Now, there is about a two inch gap
in between the ground and the bottom of the firing. So what I'll do is put in a layer of rock
and then build that up two inches to reach to the bottom of the ring. And that means we'll also need some holes
around the bottom so that we can let that air come in through the bottom
as well as travel on to the top says that air is heated up, it rises up
and then comes out of the holes to the top of the fire, giving it some more oxygen
and allowing that smoke to be burned off. And what is the secondary combustion? So that is exactly what we're looking for.
That's our main goal. And another thing
that I'm really hoping we can get is some of those flames
actually shooting out of the top holes. And that happens when that air is so hot and superheated, it
ignites coming straight out of the holes. It looks like it's a burner
on top of a stove. And if we can get that,
that will be absolutely amazing. So that's the idea behind
what we're going to do. Let's get going. So I've gone ahead and removed
four of the bricks around this entire fire pit, one kind of on each quadrant north,
south, east and west, if you will. Honestly, that's
probably the easiest way to do it. I'm going to make sure that that air
is getting to the fire. So I pulled out the firing and then
I removed almost all of the lava rock. For all those folks who were saying
the lava rock is a bad idea. You are absolutely right. He was a pain in the butt to try to get
the ashes out from the lava rock. But I went ahead
and put some pavers in here and these are lined directly
with the stones that I remove. So the air should be able to come in here,
hit these channels and hit the underneath of the fire,
much like one of those smokeless designs. So it's time to light up another fire
and bust out the smoke bombs or to get the fire going. And as you can see, it is super smoky. Now, I know that this wood is not as dry
as the guy told me it was. You saw it to me. So, you know, that's going to provide
some extra smoke, but that should just show us
how efficient we can get it. Now, for the spirit of proper
data collection on this test, I have labeled above each of the halls
ABC and the go ahead and the light this up and then we can see
if all four holes are drawing in because kind of feel
like a couple of them aren't. All right. So we're going to start
over here on the A side, definitely drawing it in B side. Also go to the sea side, also drawing it in and the D side. So we've got air flow going in on all four
sides feeding into the fire. Now. Honestly, I
can't really tell a huge difference. Definitely not in the smoke by opening up. There's definitely more airflow,
but what's it doing? And when you put that white smoke in there just kind of mixes
with the other white smoke. You can't really tell what's going on.
But I've been whole now on you guys. That's right. I've got an orange smoke,
mom's gavels. It's on fire. One of these up and we'll see where
that air is really going. Oh, the cat is chasing a snake. We won't tell Susan that. All right, let's light up this orange. See what we can see. Oh. Oh, wow. Oh, look at that. It's not really going underneath
and feeding the fire. Oh, no. There it goes.
Look at that. That's been sucked in there. Oh, that's cool.
Let's go to the back side. It's just kind of
like going up in the air. It's not really going
underneath the fire at all. So I'd say just by removing the bricks, it'll definitely
give your fire more oxygen. I just don't know. This makes it that much more efficient,
and it really doesn't cut down on the smoke
as much as I thought it might. All right. We definitely have the supply air that we need
for that smokeless design. But now we need to distribute it out of the top for that coveted
secondary combustion in that heated air. So I want to take the firing into the shop and we can start drilling
some holes with heavy. Let's talk about the location and the size of the holes,
because I am somewhat of a nerd. I went ahead and looked up the patent
for this hollow stove and I found it. So they say that
the holes can range in size all the way up to 4.8 inches at the top,
and then the lower holes are one inch. But I have seen other videos
here on YouTube where people are using all the way up to two inches
and all the way down to a half inch. So what I'm thinking is
we try them all out and see what the airflow looks like
coming out of them. And I'll do that all on the same ring, and then we'll throw the smoke bombs in there
and see how that air is shooting out and see if it tells us anything about
the airflow for that secondary combustion. I got the firing set up on the bench
and I'm hoping that this is a good system to drill it in. I think I'm going to drill
from the inside, but it kind of looks like it's
just like an inter-dimensional portal. I could just reach in there, pull out. Nice. I want to evenly
spaced out the holes. I'm using this little trick
that I saw from Hackman, who's like the Godfather of Smokeless DIY
Firepits here on YouTube. He uses blue tape so that I know the exact
distance of it with the blue tape. Now I can take it off,
put it on a flat surface, make my measurements,
and then put it back on. And it just makes it really easy. Instead of trying to get a tape measure in on this curved surface
and mark everything, now I can just use the center punch on there and that'll give me a good start
for drilling my holes. I'm going to start off
with the one and a half inch and I'm going to use
a whole saw to do that. Then go to the one inch
with another halsall and then move over to a step bit. I will be wearing some protection, which
has a nice little facemask on it too. And you know, we're just going to go Mad
Max on this thing and hopefully I don't drill through my bench,
see how it goes. I found it a lot easier
to drill some pilot holes in the ring first before going in
with that larger hole saw. I'm also spraying some
WD 40 multi-use product on there to keep things lubricated. A WD 40 brand is the sponsor. Today's video I'm using the trigger pro
non aerosol can here and is great for spraying down a large area but still having control
and not making a lot of mess. Now what obviously helps
lubricate the cut, but it was also making a little
slurry of chips in the liquid there. So instead of the chips flying off, they're kind of bunching
together around the hole because of the lubrication and the liquid.
They're holding them together. Every time I'm working with the
WD 40 Original Formula, it just takes me back
to being a kid in my garage, working with my dad,
either my bike or the lawnmower. And there's just a great heritage
in history with WD 40 Brand, but they are more
than just their original formula. They have a full range of next level
solutions to help you get the job done right, including their specialist
line up with the dry lube. But white lithium grease and rust remover,
which are some of my favorites. I'm going to link down below
in the description where you can go check them out
and where to buy them. And a big thank you to WD 40
brand for sponsoring today's video. I heard. I'm super excited about this. This thing is looking awesome. So here on the A-side, I've got the one and a half inch holes,
I've got five of them. They're on the B side,
we've got the one inch holes. And I did seven of them over here. I did half inch holes on the C side and I did ten and then I double
that amount actually a little bit more. And I did 22 holes
over here on the opening. So I'm going to be able to light these up. We're going to put some smoke bombs
in here and see where the airflow goes. But first, I'll stoke up a fire and get it
going and really heat up this firing. All right. We've been going
for about 45 minutes now. And you can see we are still very smoky. But I've got the little smoke bombs. I just got a little piece of two by four
and I'm going to light it and then set it in the hole
so I can kind of have my hands free. And we'll start with the side with the one and a half inch holes,
and then I'll try to move it around and we can see how that smoke
is coming out of those holes, if any. And I know there's gonna be a bunch of big
leaks, so let's check it out. All right, guys,
I'm jumping in from the next day, and I took a seat because I needed
after the beating I took last night. I'll give you the highlights. But basically, I was trying to get the
smoke to come through the holes and show which ones were the best. And it went everywhere
except through the holes. And that's because
of these tumbled stones. These stones are just uneven and organic.
They look amazing. I love the look at them, but they just
have so many gaps in the smoke in the air. We're going everywhere
except through those holes, so we're going to try
to make this work still. I've got some kwikset mortar
and I'm going to put it around the inside to try to fill up
all the gaps in the top two rows, and then we'll put the ring back on there
and see if we can make it work. But yeah, if you're thinking about using
tumbled stones for a smokeless fire. But. Yeah. Maybe don't do that. The motor is all set up and honestly, it's turned out way
better than I expected. It doesn't look good,
but everything is very solid now. Nothing is shaking anymore. And more importantly,
all of the gaps are plugged up. So now I can put the ring back in here. We can really get a test
to see if that air starts flowing out. Now, there are going to be
some gaps around the rim. I already did a little test of it,
so I am going to put some aluminum foil underneath the lip of the ring
just to act as a little gasket. But don't worry,
there will be foil in there at the end. I've got a plan for that. All right. We were ready for the fire,
but I want to show you real quick. I did go ahead and put some gravel
in there, as well as a paver stone so that that'll be
a lot easier to clean everything out. Also, you'll notice a little support
block in the opening for the supply air. And I just cut a couple
of bricks into two thirds and then put those in there because I did see that it was sagging
and it needed that support. Hopefully it doesn't
cut down too much on the airflow. All right. The fire
is starting to get going. But I realize that, you know, smoke grenades only last for so long
and I have to keep buying them. So I got a fog machine. I get a little bit
out of control here, guys. But if I just shoot it in a little bit
down here, I can see the air sucking in and I see a lot of it coming out of these
top holes, which is great. A little leakage here around the top. But the interesting thing is that
I see it coming out of the larger holes all the way around the other side. I think that's just because those holes
are so much larger that there's more surface area out there and the air is going to go
to the path of least resistance . So what I want to do
is plug some of those up before the fire gets too big and test out the other ones
to see how much we can get out of these little holes here. Get the holes plugged up and I'm
going to throw some smoke in there. Oh, check that out. Come on over here. Let me put it in the air
holes over here on this side. Oh, yeah, that's coming out a lot better. The next day we ran out of
light yesterday, so I want to hit it with the orange
smoke bombs this morning and see if we can get a little bit better
view of what's going on. All right. Here we go. Oh, look at it. Oh, you can really see it coming out of the ones
with the multiple holes over there. A lot is escaping underneath. Let's go to this other side. Oh, wow. There we go. There's some good streams coming out. Think we're really missing is
maybe some of the air holes at the bottom, because you can see it's
kind of fighting to get in there. So after all that testing
and looking at the smoke, I decided to go with the half inch holes
because when I was looking at the larger holes, the one and a half
and the one inch holes, it seemed that the air would just kind of flow out and not be as forceful,
which makes sense because it's a larger opening.
And so the air's probably moving slower. So with the half inch holes,
it can get more towards that fire and then one inch
spacing or two inch spacing. Why don't we meet in the middle? So we get this first section laid out for the holes
and it's going to have 15 of a half inch holes and they're going
to be spaced an inch and a half. Now, at the bottom,
I'm actually doing some supply holes and those are going to be spaced at three
and three quarters of an inch. And I may have six of those. So it should give
the fire a lot of air on the bottom as well as provide that secondary
combustion, the air up at the top . At least that's the theory. That was a ton of drilling,
but I installed it and it looks great. I also sunk down the paper
to be flush with the stone, so we're going to get
some good airflow at the bottom. I do have the aluminum foil
underneath there. You'll still see, but I'm going to do a mortar
bit around there to get even with it. But I would do that later because
I want to get this fire in tonight. All right, guys, are about 20 minutes in, and I'm going to hit this thing
with the fog machine and see what happens. Oh, definitely getting
a lot of leakage around the top. Aluminum foil gasket is not so hot. Oh, but look at that
pouring out of the holes over here. We're still getting some smoke,
but you can see the fire is popping because this is not the driest world.
And I think no matter what we do, we're going
to be getting some smoke on this one. All right. So yesterday's fire was
pretty good, but I think we can do better. Even though it did start off really clean. There was some smoke
that kind of worked its way in. And then I rearranged the logs
and it kind of went away. Then it came back and I really think that
that's due to the wood. So I want to give it one more go. I went ahead and I put a layer of mortar
around the top of the ring because there was a little bit of smoke
escaping on the smoke bombs. And I also got some wood from my dad
that's been dry for like five years. So it's gonna be way
better than what we used, and we're going to go for it
one last time, see if we can really get a smokeless fire and see if we can get those superheated flames
coming out of the side so we can do. All right, guys,
this is the last try for the video. I've got the TV ready. Let's fire this thing up
and see if we can get some sweet, sweet secondary combustion flames. All right, it's starting up. Here we go. All right. We've got a little bit smoky,
just like last time. I'm going to rearrange it now and try
to get some better airflow in there. We were about a half hour in now, and this thing is putting out
almost no smoke. This is a huge improvement even over that
last one with that wet wood. So the dry wood makes all the difference. Now, the only thing left to do
is shooting flames out of the side. Let's go for it. I'm just going to chunk wood on
until it melts through the earth. I don't know if we're quite there yet, but I'm pretty sure I'm seeing something
coming out of those holes. Oh, man. Scarlet. Oh, look at that. Oh, man. Flames coming out. That is so fantastic. All right, guys, I'm chalking
this one up as a huge win. I am so pleased with how this turned out. And most importantly, almost no smoke. If you want, check out some more outdoor projects like refinishing
your deck or maybe storage underneath it. I've got a playlist
cued up for you right there. I want to give a big
thank you to those folks that have been joining
the Football Builders Club. And until next time, guys
get out there and build something awesome.
