This post is from July 8, 2018. It is re-posted, here, on our new website. We didn’t want to lose any of that great material from the previous website.
Here are a few teaser photos of our destination in Alaska. I’m looking forward to spending time up there again. I miss the solitude and silence.
I built that fire pit last year. It took seven days to complete. Best thing EVER!
It was HARD work getting that thing completed! We don’t have a driveway onto our property. Everything needs to be carried or wheeled in on a garden cart. Our soft, mossy trail winds though a forest of black spruce covered with lichens, highbush cranberry shrubs, labrador tea, and countless more beautiful plants and fungi. The trail is not long. It’s only 75 yards, more or less, to the build site.
Never the less, hauling sundries and supplies is a real life Cross Fit workout….everyday…..several times a day. I’m pretty sure I made twenty trips to the vehicle while moving those landscaping stones from the road to the campfire ring site. I don’t even want to talk about loading those heavy landscaping bricks onto the cart at the building supply store OR loading the bricks into the back of our truck AND THEN heading to the spring to collect water! (More on water collection in a later post.)
Here are my instructions for building a fire pit.
DIY Fire Pit
Step 1: Determine the size of your pit. I used our old barrel pit as a guide.
Step 2: Dig, dig, dig down to mineral soil. There were a lot of roots and moss to remove.
Step 3: Level with sand.
Step 4: Dig a small channel the width of the landscaping stones. Fill channel with pea gravel. Begin arranging landscaping stones. Leave air holes in bottom and middle layers. The bottom layer is most critical. It took me several tries to get the layout correct.
Step 5: Lay smaller pavers in bottom of pit. I did this step to make it easier to shovel out ash.
Step 6:Fill spaces with pea gravel.
I hope it survived the winter. This is how I put it to bed in the fall of 2017.
There you have it! Our DIY fire pit! I still have to do more digging around the pit but it is perfectly functional right now. We are looking forward to spending many evenings enjoying its warmth.
Thank you so much for visiting!