Build it yourself
The pit is the easy part
A block circle that a smokeless insert drops straight into. Five courses, sixty-five blocks, one afternoon.
Some Friday soon there are chairs in a ring and nobody heading inside early. The fire is the reason everyone stays, and the thing standing between you and it is usually not the fire at all. It is that you have nowhere to put one.
This is the whole build. No mortar, no footing, no concrete work, no cutting. You are stacking block in a circle and setting a smokeless insert on top of it. Most people get it done in an afternoon.
Watch the build
Sixty three seconds, and there is no narration: the video has no sound at all. Everything it shows is written out beside it.
The build, in four steps
- Mark and level the padMark a 48 inch circle. Dig out 4 inches, fill with paver base, and tamp it flat and level. The insert carries its own weight on the brim, so the pad is there to stop the block heaving over a winter.
- Lay the first courseSet 13 blocks in a ring, butted tight on the inside edge. The gaps open up on the outside, which is normal and correct for a circle. Check level as you go, not at the end.
- Stack four more coursesTurn each course by half a block so no joint stacks directly on the one below. No mortar needed. Five courses brings you to 17.5 inches.
- Drop the insert inTwo people. The 37 inch brim rests on the top course and the 24 inch firebox hangs inside the ring. Nothing should touch the gravel.
Why you cannot just buy a kit
Two reasons, and they are both dimensions rather than opinions.
Reason one, depth
Four courses is an inch short
The Comfort II manual asks for a pit at least 15 inches deep, because that is the airflow underneath that makes it smokeless. Standard retaining wall block is 3.5 inches, so four courses is 14 inches and misses it. Five courses is 17.5 inches, which clears it.
Every off-the-shelf fire pit kit is four courses.
Reason two, width
And they are too small
Lowe’s RumbleStone No-Cut kits state inside dimensions of 24 by 24 inches. The round Comfort II needs an opening between 27 and 35 inches.
So the kit is both too shallow and too narrow, and no amount of stacking fixes the second one.
What it takes
The build shown above is a 30 inch opening, the middle of the Comfort II’s range and the easiest to lay.
- Opening, inside
- 30"
- Outside diameter
- 44"
- Courses of block
- 5
- Finished height
- 17.5"
- Blocks in total
- 65
- Gravel pad
- 48" circle, 4" deep
That is 65 blocks at 14.1 lb each, about 916 lb in total, plus 9 bags of paver base. It needs a truck or paid delivery. It will not fit in a car.
Buy the block by the each, inside the store.
Home Depot sells this block online in full pallets only: 144 blocks and 1,994 lb. You need 65. Buying loose at the store is the difference between the blocks you need and a pallet you cannot use.
Building a different size
| Opening | Outside | Per course | Total blocks | Weight | Gravel pad |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 27" | 41" | 11 | 55 | 776 lb | 45" circle |
| 30"shown above | 44" | 13 | 65 | 916 lb | 48" circle |
| 33" | 47" | 14 | 70 | 987 lb | 51" circle |
| 35" | 49" | 15 | 75 | 1058 lb | 53" circle |
The printable list carries all four, along with the square build and the safety notes from the Comfort II manual.
Two pages: the block count and the base for all four sizes, and what to tell the yard so you come home with 65 blocks instead of a pallet.
The insert that drops in
The ring is the part you build. The Burly Comfort II is the part that makes it smokeless: a double wall firebox that pulls air up through the gap and burns the smoke before it reaches you. It rests on the top course on its own brim.
Two pages: the block count and the base for all four sizes, and what to tell the yard so you come home with 65 blocks instead of a pallet.