There's nothing better than a roaring fire to draw friends and family together. Yes, you could set some stones around a hole or spend fifty dollars on a steel fire ring. But for a little more time and money you could create something that's beautiful and something to be proud of. The fire pit I am going to show you will be very attractive, fairly simple to build, easy to maintain, and should outlast me. If you haven't already done so, the first thing you will want to do is pick a location for your fire pit. A few things to keep in mind when choosing the location might include overhead trees that could burn, close proximity to other combustibles (leaves, pine straw, dead vegetation), and neighbors yards that hot embers could land on creating a fire. You want to choose a location that will be big enough for the size pit you want, and try to have it as level as possible. What kind of material will you want to use, and how will it look in the area? .
I decide I wanted a 40-inch inside diameter pit, which would make for a larger than usual recreational fire, but also make it useful for when I need to burn large limbs, bushes or other things I am always doing around the house. I really wanted to use natural stone, but I didn't want to do any masonry work since I had no experience doing it. Masonry work is a little more time consuming, and can be significantly more costly. So I decided to use concrete landscaping blocks you can pick up very conveniently and reasonably priced at Home depot, Lowes, or even Wal-Mart. Since just using stone by itself (weather concrete or natural) with a very hot fire isn't the best idea because it might crack, I decided to use a stainless steel ring with crushed stone in between that and the concrete blocks. Now that we have decided on the size, location, and type of materials, it's time to start the layout.
Take a stake and pound it into the ground dead center of where you want the pit to be, leaving it up high enough to tie a string around it.
