How to make a fire pit at the dacha, in the yard

In the courtyard of the house, at the dacha or garden plot, it is so pleasant to sit by the fire and roast kebabs. There are metal braziers for frying meat, but they are utilitarian and no one thinks of enjoying the sight of burning wood. On the contrary, ready-made coals are often thrown in, adding just a little thin wood to minimize preparation time. In the case of a fire pit – a special place to build a fire – things are different. It is a place more commonly referred to as a fire hearth. It is designed not only to grill kebabs, but also to admire the fire. On the dacha and garden plot, the hearth for the fire will come in handy after pruning: you can burn the branches, and the ash can be used as fertilizer.

Place for a bonfire in the dacha

The hearth for a bonfire on a homestead plot or at a dacha is better located at a sufficient distance from the house – so that the smoke does not reach the house.

The site should be windblown – a good draft is necessary for proper combustion. The place should be flat or you will have to level some of the area – under the hearth itself and under the place for rest, benches, benches or chairs.

Design and dimensions

The hearth for the fire can be round or rectangular in shape. It can be buried so deep that it will be at the same level with the ground, it can be partially buried, with slightly elevated walls. There are options that are generally above ground level – put on a previously prepared site. So the choice is yours.

About the forms, it is useless to argue. Round ones are more convenient – we put firewood in a shalashikom. But rectangular ones are easier to build, especially brick ones. Here all the techniques are known – the masonry is carried out as an ordinary wall. Just the thickness of the wall – in a quarter of a brick.

Those who decide how to equip a fire pit in the backyard of the house, at the dacha or garden plot, usually have a few questions:

• What size should the hearth be for the fire pit?
• Is there a need for a blower, if yes, then how many, what sizes, how to make them and where to place them?
• Should I put a grate or not?
• How to make it easier to clean the hearth?

In fact, the first two questions are interrelated. If the size of the bowl for the fire is quite large – a meter or more in diameter, you can make the walls solid, without a blowhole. If less than a meter, you will have to make holes for air intake.

Blowpipes are better to make not from below, but in the walls. Their number is two or four – diagonally opposite each other. In the wall leave small holes, breaking off a piece of brick (with a quarter, approximately). If necessary, they can be laid with the same, slightly undercut, quarters. It is not worth to make the under-blower from the bottom: with such a design often flakes of ashes fly around the site during the “work” of the hearth – they are carried away by the air flow, which is difficult to regulate with such a design.

About grates. It is as you prefer – you can do, but they do not really affect the functionality or convenience.

Site preparation

If the site has dense sandy soils, you can exclude land works. The second option for a simplified fire pit device is an existing site, laid with paving tiles, stone, asphalted or concreted. On this base you can lay a couple or three rows of brick or stone. Here and ready hearth. This option is ideal for soils that do not drain water well. After rain, on such a site, a buried bowl under the fire will turn into a mini-pond and will take a very long time to dry.

In other cases, you can not do without preparatory work. No, you can build a hearth for a fire right on the ground, but in a few years it will be in disrepair – the walls will “creep” after rains or spring soil heaving. Preparation of the site for a fire pit is standard:

1. We remove the fertile layer of soil, remove roots, stones.
2. Level and tamp the soil.
3. We pour a layer of crushed stone (not lime, but granite) of medium and coarse fractions of 10-20 cm, leveling, tramming.

Already on this base you can install the hearth, provided that you are satisfied with the crushed stone cushion as a base or are going to pour concrete. True, for concrete you will need to gather formwork around the perimeter. If you plan to pave the area around the hearth with tiles or stone, pour sand or a fine fraction of sift on top of the crushed stone. Tamp the sand/sift, level it, and then lay tile or stone.

On clay or fertile soils, so that the crushed stone does not “go” into the ground, geotextile with a density of 200-250 g/m is put under it. This is a non-woven material that allows water to pass through, prevents roots from sprouting and prevents the crushed stone from mixing with the soil. In fact, this is a very important layer that is better to lay.

How to make a hearth for a campfire out of concrete

A concrete fire pit can be round or square. The difference is only in the shape of the formwork. Only two rings or two rectangles/squares will be needed.

A round shape can be made, for example, from two metal barrels of different diameters. It will only be necessary to cut two rings of the required height. After the concrete has set, the mold will have to be removed, so it will have to be cut. If you may need it in the future, make a split mold of two half-rings. Weld hinges on one side, and make locks on the other side.

A square shape is easiest to make from boards, scraps of fiberboard, thick plywood. They do not necessarily have to be new, but they should be even. We use self-tapping screws to assemble the form – it will also need to be disassembled.

The distance between the outer and inner formwork should be equal to the thickness of the wall. For a concrete hearth, a sufficient thickness is 15-20 cm. We place the form on the prepared base, check the distance, verticality and horizontality. Fix the form by hammering in pegs so that the formwork does not move when filled with concrete.

Between the two formworks formed a ring in which we will pour concrete. In this ring into the ground and hammer pieces of rebar with a diameter of 10-14 mm. They are necessary for greater rigidity of the walls. The length of the armature is about 60 cm, the installation step is 15-20 cm. We also hammer them into the ground for 15-20 cm. Arrange the reinforcement in the middle of the ring so that its upper edge “sank” in the concrete by 5 cm or a little more.

Now you can pour the concrete. The composition is usual; for 1 part of cement M150, 3 parts of sand and 4 parts of crushed stone. Water is usually 0,7-0,8 parts (depends on the moisture content of sand and crushed stone). We pour the concrete into the mold, leave it for 5-7 days, after which the formwork is disassembled. Concrete hearth for the fire is ready, but the fire can be made in it not earlier than 2-3 weeks, and better – in a month and a half. Only then it will gain enough strength and will not crack from the fire.

Making a fire pit of brick or stone

To equip a place for a fire with bricks can be done in different ways. There are simple and cheap, but which can quickly fall apart. There are more complex in the manufacture, but they will serve for several years for sure. To build a hearth for a fire, you can use an ordinary full-body red brick, but it will “live” not long. Such material can be used for dacha or garden hearths for one or two seasons.

According to the rules

For stationary decorated recreation areas it will be necessary to look for fireclay brick. You will choose the size yourself, but it is easier to make smaller bricks, though it takes longer. But even for the largest fireplace will need only four or five dozen bricks, so that not so much time will take laying.

Fireclay bricks are not cheap, so when laying a hearth, usually the inner part of the hearth, which is directly in contact with the flame, is laid out of fireclay. The outer part can be covered with ordinary bricks or stone.

If you are broke on fireclay bricks, then it is worth putting it on fireclay mortar – it is sold in the form of powder in packets. Water is added to the composition, stirred. After some time, the mortar is ready for use. After you put the hearth, you will have to wait 5-7 days for the mortar to dry out. Then load the hearth with firewood and warm it up for a couple of hours. It is necessary for the mortar and bricks to sinter into a single whole, and for this the temperature should be high. So do not spare firewood here. But fireclay mortar is used only for laying the inner part of the hearth – where temperatures are the highest. The outer row is laid on cement-sand mortar. Fireclay is inadmissible here – it will not have enough temperature and it will simply crumble.

Ordinary bricks can be laid on clay or cement mortar. In some cases, you can do without mortar at all – by filling the voids between the bricks with compacted rubble, sand or soil.

Simple and quick

It only takes a few hours to build a fire pit. You only need a few flat granite stones or pebbles, crushed stone. They are used to lay out the bottom of the fire pit. You can also lay bricks on the bottom, and fill the gaps with crushed stone. For the erection of the walls of the hearth for the fire will need a dozen two or three bricks. That’s all.

The order of work on the arrangement of the fireplace is as follows:

1. Mark out a circle on the ground.
2. Remove the turf and remove the soil to a depth that is equal to the length of the brick and the thickness of the base. The brick installed on the poke should be at least slightly raised above the ground level – then the hearth will not flood and will not blow away.
3. Level and compact the bottom.
4. Lay bricks or stones, tap them well with a mallet (or just with your feet).
5. Fill the gaps with crushed stone, which is also well kneaded into the ground.
6. Around the circumference, we put bricks “dumbly”. They become from one side closely one to another, and from the other side small gaps are formed. They are filled with previously excavated soil (if it is not clay or loam), sand or small rubble.

Reliable design of a round hearth for a fire made of brick

In order for a brick fire pit to serve for a long time, its walls should stand on a solid base. On a bed of crushed stone, a reinforced belt of concrete is usually poured. It is made around the circumference, thickness – not less than the thickness of the walls, height – 10-15 cm. For greater strength, approximately in the middle of the height is laid reinforcing ring from a rod with a diameter of 12-14 mm.

The inner part of the hearth is laid with fireclay bricks, the outer part – with ordinary, hollow bricks, laid with joint dressing (with an offset of half a brick). Fireclay bricks are laid on clay or fireclay mortar, ordinary bricks – on cement-sand mixture.

Such a hearth for a brick fire requires more materials and time for arrangement, but it will serve for more than one year. And to keep it from being flooded by precipitation and not blocked by leaves, you can cover the fire pit with a shield. In this form, by the way, it can be used as a table.

Exactly on the same principle, a square or rectangular brick hearth is built. The technology is unchanged, the difference is only in shape.

Simple variants

Make a hearth for a fire can also be much faster. First, very many are offered dacha or yard hearths from metal. All you need is a platform on which you will put a metal fire pit.

The plus side of this solution is not too big a price and the simplicity of the device of the place for making a fire. To the advantages can be attributed and a small weight, which allows you to bring in the winter or bad weather installation under the roof.

A very similar option is a concrete bowl for a campfire. They are cast in different sizes, they can be round or square. Exactly the same you can make yourself, but you will have to wait at least a month. And the ready-made bowl is put, and you can use it.

Photo-ideas for decorating a place for a fire

Make a hearth for a fire – it’s only half a job. It is also necessary to equip the site – so that you can sit, look at the fire, enjoy the evening and conversation with friends. We have collected some interesting ideas in this section.