Rant: My patio fire pit turned into a smoke bomb on Saturday

So I finally got around to using that cheap fire pit I picked up from a guy on Facebook Marketplace. I set it up on the concrete slab behind my garage in Tacoma, grabbed some logs from a bundle at the gas station, and lit it up. Within 5 minutes I was choking on smoke so bad my wife yelled from the kitchen window asking if I was burning tires. Turns out I had zero airflow because the legs were sitting too low on the ground and the ash pan was packed with wet leaves from the previous owner. I grabbed a couple of bricks I had laying around from an old garden project and propped the whole thing up an inch. Worked perfect after that, smoke went straight up and we sat out there until 11pm. Has anyone else run into crappy airflow on these budget steel pits or did I just get a dud?

3 comments

3 Comments

hunt.nora18d ago

Those fire pits from the gas station are hit or miss. I had a similar one from Fred Meyer a few years ago and it was the same problem. The legs on those cheap steel pits are usually just stamped out flat, so they barely lift the thing off the ground. You got it right with the bricks though. One thing I would say is those wet leaves in the ash pan probably were not from the previous owner. More likely they got blown in from sitting outside on the concrete slab before you bought it. People usually clean their stuff out before they sell it, at least in my experience. Did you check if the concrete got stained underneath from moisture trapped under there?

scott.jana18d ago

Something folks don't always think about with those gas station fire pits is the air flow underneath. The legs being flat against the concrete can actually choke the fire out if the ground isn't perfectly level. A small pocket of trapped moisture or uneven surface kills the draft before it gets going. Bricks fix that by giving a consistent gap all around. Also check the concrete for hairline cracks a couple months down the road. The heat from even a small fire pit can stress a slab that's already got some settling going on.

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the_holly18d ago

Nah, that's not a dud. Most cheap fire pits just need a little lift like you figured out.