My wife and I love to have an outdoor fire in the backyard. It’s a great way to entertain or just to cap off of the day, But building a bonfire on the lawn left an ugly Circle that grew larger all the time. the next day I was always cringing at the horrible look of the charred grass. Plus we worried that an ember could cause a significant fire to the nearby neighbor’s lawns.
That’s when we decided it was time to add a cool fire pit to our outdoor landscape. It was a great idea. But going from idea to reality, well that’s another question. There are just tons of options and materials to select from. It’s fantastic, but it makes choosing the design, and more importantly, selecting the material, a really difficult chore.
Pavers are Better than Natural Stone
So I talked to my neighbor, an expert Landscaping professional. He gave us some ideas to help us think of materials to use and decide on how to build it. He told us that; as a general rule of thumb, you want to consider using concrete pavers instead of real rock. the reason is simple. pavers are uniform in size, lighter, and easier for you or the landscaper to work with. and the beauty of using pavers is that they now come with the look and feel of natural stone.
I decided to choose a paver that had a brick fire look to it. These were perfect for what I wanted to do. Plus I got a huge discount on a nice lot of brick pavers.
My next step was to decide how and where I was going to build the fire pit. My wife and I considered building a traditional brick fire pit on a concrete foundation. But we found out that this was going to take a hefty investment. Instead, we chose to build the fire pit right over the charred circle we had already created on the lawn.
The Process
I dug up a 30-inch deep trench through the soil on the circular perimeter. I asked for help from a buddy of mine to pour the concrete in the trench and then to build up the wall high enough for a fire pit.
In the end, the process was not that difficult and it only took us a day to build a simple fire pit using a concrete trench and brick pavers. Today this is the fire pit that my wife and I enjoy. It is a place to sit with our friends and relax with a cold beer. The pit looks great and it safely contains any fire without burning the grass that sits next to it.