Wood or Propane Fire Pit Advice

[jazz4cash]

We're finishing a paver patio and will be adding a wood or propane fire pit. We have a cheap wood burning pit now and we prefer something that could be moved around. My concern with the propane units is whether they put out much heat or is it just for aesthetic effect? I'm also looking for stoves with a lot of thermal mass (like a cast iron wood stove or chiminea).

 

[Jerry1]

I have a cheap propane unit and it puts out enough heat. Not real easy to move around, but I have a hand cart that makes it simple enough to do it I want. I imagine the more mass and the more heat, the less portable it will be. I was against the propane unit, but bought it for DW. We both like it a lot. I could easily see using propane if I wanted a nice center piece to a new patio.

 

[Blue Collar Guy]

I bought a fire table for my sons house warming gift. It is Pub Table Height with 6 chairs.In my area the wood burning ones are illegal so its just propane. At the end of the night no ones clothes smell like smoke, so thats a plus too. here is the link https://www.hayneedle.com/product/h...re-pit-chat-set.cfm?ltype=child&tid=ALMO106-1. It has an adjustable flame for more or less warmth. But if you shut it off, no residual heat.

 

[Fedup]

Propane with a fake wood look here. Too much smoke otherwise.

 

[Scrapr]

We just did your project last Fall. We had pavers to extend/expand our patio. And found a guy to custom make a fire table. It took him a long time to do the table. But it's nice, Granite top w/the fire thing in the middle, Removable glass wind blocker thing.

We use it several times a night. Ohh, it's propane. Didn't want the smoke and ashes to clean up. Not a ton of heat generated, But it's about a foot to the edge of the table too. We probably do almost a tank of propane a week. I probably need to adjust the fire height down a bit to save propane

It's on wheels and we can move it around. The original design had the casters on the inside of the body. It ended up being placed exterior. Which was not my preference. Overall I'm about 65% happy with our design. But a couple things about it bug me


https://www.dropbox.com/s/pi2vi37o8wtf82n/2017-06-03 20.21.14.jpg?dl=0

https://www.dropbox.com/s/pi2vi37o8wtf82n/2017-06-03 20.21.14.jpg?dl=0

 

[Texas Proud]

If you want heat why not go with one of those patio heaters...

Just looked and saw an interesting looking one...

 

[brucethebroker]

Second photo looks like an ancient Aztec fire god idol.....

 

[Dash man]

We ran a natural gas line to our fire pit. No worry of running out of gas. Not portable but puts out plenty of heat once the fake logs and lava rock heat up. No ashes to clean, no smoke problems. Love it!

 

[jazz4cash]

Thanks for all the replies. Keep em coming. I was going to expand the conversation to the patio heaters but Tex already did that for me!

I'm going to take some time to decide, but I'm leaning toward propane. In the meantime we'll use the old cheap wood fire pit with something under it to protect the new pavers.

 

[mpeirce]

I'm old school - nothing is as good as wood.

When DW wanted to convert the indoor fireplace to gas I got a chiminea type thing for outside wood burning. When we upgraded the patio, we had a fireplace built into it - so I get most of my wood burning fix using that now.

I still use the chiminea on halloween. I haul it out to the end of the driveway (on the street) and fire it up to keep warm when we hand out candy. About 50% of folks on our street have a fire going for halloween.

The chiminea has the advantage that with it's little chimney it creates a draft and keeps the fire burning nice and clean.

 

[Rambler]

We just bought a wood fired version, fire pit in the middle of a table, with 4 chairs included, for our patio at the Nevada home. Prefer wood, but procuring the wood can be a pain. Propane is easier.

 

[bradaz2488]

When we built the house we had them run a natural gas line to the outside BBQ and fire pit. It is a big built-in fire pit with sitting. We did not get enough heat from the gas w/ lava rocks and it was very expensive to operate. Switched to wood and have been very happy. Maybe they ran too small (diameter) line to the fire pit so it did not burn very well (?). BBQ works great and it is nice not having to refill the tank.