# Fire pit!



## Ruthless53

My wife and her siblings wanted to get their father a firepit for the backyard in his new house. 1st I called a guy I know that builds them and got a Quote which was too much for all of us to spend. Then I found the pavestone kit on HD website and that was doable. Went to see a good friend who owns a brick/stone company and long story short he gave me a whole pallet of oklahoma chop and and the matching flagstone. 

Drew the pit out to be 7ft outside diameter with 4ft inside diameter and 18inch wide and 18" high walls. First venture into anything masonry wise so it was a learning process. Worked on a concrete crew as a college job for a couple months but that's as close as I've ever done. I think it turned out pretty sweet!

Started off by making measurements and digging a trench for a 4inch slab instead of using forms.


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## Ruthless53

Poured the concrete and put in the rebar. Also put 24inch rebar in vertically. They went about 8 inches into the dirt, 4inches in the slab and 12 inches above the slab.


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## Ruthless53

Dug out the center about 8 inches deep (4 inches below concrete) and sloped it toward the center and dug a paint can size hole in the center. Filled with large river rocks topped by all purpose rocks for drainage.


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## Ruthless53

Then came the real work! Added 5 2 inch pipes around the bottom for air flow. Filled the space between the two stone layers full of mortar and worked our way up.


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## Ruthless53

And on up...


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## Ruthless53

And finally done!! It was pretty dang hard work!!! Glad to have done it but I don't know if I'd do it again!


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## Ruthless53

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## Fishtexx

That looks great! Thanks for documenting the process, I have been thinking about building one also.


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## hoosierplugger

Beautiful and thanks for the pics!


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## HuntNFishNick

How much were the quotes? I am planning on doing the same thing when our house gets done in March. I am trying to figure out how i need to do it cause we are getting a flagstone patio and i am doing one on the flagstone with brick around it and topped with flagstone. 
I guess i will drill in the flagstone patio for the rebar then concrete.


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## Law Dog

That looks great! Thanks for sharing the pics and information. I will be building one soon at the ranch..


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## Ruthless53

Quotes with me providing stone were between $2500 and $3500. If I would have had to buy the stone it would have been around $1100 cost in materials. Roughly $750 for the stone and right at $375 for all other materials. As far as rebar I used the 24" precut rebar and staggered them around the slab so they were kind of overlapping. They were not touching or tied together which isn't really necessary as long as they are floating and not touching the ground below. Other materials were 9 80lb bags of maximizer industrial concrete, 34 60lb bags of mortar, 5 bags of Agro River Rocks, 12 bags of Agro all purpose stone, and a couple other tools. Granted this is a very large pit for a house and there is probably a better way to fill the center of the stones but I chose to use mortar as we could mix it with a drill vs concrete having to use a shovel and elbow grease! I had 2 other guys most of the time and another 2 for a bit too. Stone alone was 5200 lbs with 1k lbs or so left over. It was a hell of alot of work! I'm beat up right now! Having a chop saw with a stone blade ($60 bucks we didnt want to spend) would have cut alot of labor off but it still would have been alot of sore muscles involved.

I would do it again in the situation but if its something a person could afford I would recommend paying to have it done! Getting the right rocks for the top was very tedious and had a by product of alot of unusable pieces due to breakage in the wrong spots. Was told that with a stone as dense as this you don't need fire bricks. They are quite expensive too. It's the pourous stones you have to worry about. Was also told the special mortar was not really necessary for this either (Again very expensive). I tend to overbuild everything as I'm kind of a perfectionist and want to do things the best possible way. I'm kind of nervous about the stone and mortar but I trust the guy who told me that and I also confirmed on the interweb. Will let you know how it holds up after a couple fires in it.


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## das7777

Nice looking fire pit!


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## Jeff SATX

i have a bunch of stone left over from my house, i'm going to build me one of these for sure! looks great!


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## FISHINFOOL87

Wow look great I am going to do this! Thanks for the step by step pictures!


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## DuckMendenhall

Great looking fire pit...

I noticed that it has been several months...how is the stone and mortar holding up?


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## chumy

It needs some grating on top with a whole hog on top of that. Looks good!!


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## finkikin

Very nice pit!


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## Ruthless53

Stone and mortar have held up great! Not a single crack. He is going to eventually add a pipe on the inside so he can use one of the big circle grates and remove it when he's done.


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## AR

What type of concrete and mortar did you use?


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