Building a hearth for a fire in your own backyard, without resorting to the services of specialists, is quite realistic. The main thing is the competent selection of materials, a serious attitude to the task, as well as the choice of a suitable place where the fire will be located. Let's find out how to make a fire pit with your own hands.
Choosing a place to place the hearth
Before starting work, you need to choose the appropriate place for the location of the fire. Here it is recommended to pay attention to the following points:
- The hearth for a fire should be away from buildings, trees, parking lots, and other flammable objects.
- It is desirable that around the place chosen for the fire, there is a brick, concrete, stone, iron or any other non-combustible fence. In this case, the site will be protected from embers flying to the sides.
- The place for the hearth should be flat. Otherwise, the fire pit will flood with water when it rains.
- It is recommended to take into account the dimensions of the free territory. If the hearth for a fire is planned to be placed ona modest plot, such a solution will not be very convenient.
Tools and materials
To create a full-fledged hearth in the country, you may need the following tools:
- cement;
- refractory brick;
- flat stone;
- shovel;
- tape measure to measure the necessary parameters;
- small gravel or pebbles;
- pegs and rope;
- trowels.
Stone hearth
To make a hearth for a fire from a stone with your own hands, a wooden peg with a rope is stuck in the center of the intended place for placing the fire. With the help of such a simple device, mark the circle. Next, they begin to create a ditch, the depth of which can vary between 20-100 cm.
Then prepare the cement mortar. The ditch is filled with the mixture almost completely, leaving about 3-5 cm to the brim. Pieces of reinforcement are placed in the cement and the surface of the cement is leveled.
While the material is not frozen, the future hearth for a fire is surrounded by flat stones in a circle. With the help of a trowel, the gaps between the stones are filled with cement mortar. Excess material residues are removed with a damp sponge.
Additionally, it is worth taking care of protecting the fire from moisture in rainy weather. To do this, you can make a cover for the hearth from sheet metal or make a simple high canopy from tarpaulin.
Brick Hearth
The simplest and most affordable solution is to build a hearthfor a fire made of bricks. To do this, a round recess is prepared in the ground, the height of which corresponds to the length of the brick. The walls of the prepared bonfire are lined with the specified material, located in a vertical position. It is quite natural that the pit for the fireplace should initially be slightly wider than the desired diameter. After all, bricks will also occupy a certain area.
The edges of the fire pit can be overlaid with paving slabs or the same fragments of brick. The wide, even frame of the hearth will serve as a convenient platform for the location of country furniture, where the household will comfortably accommodate.
Metal Hearth
A fire pit with metal walls is the least wasteful option in terms of spending money, effort and time. To begin with, a pit is dug to the desired depth. In this case, you can not make the walls of the recess perfectly even.
A piece of corrugated steel can be used as a frame for such a fire. The length of the folded sheet should approximately correspond to the circumference of the prepared pit with some allowance. Having folded the material into a ring, the edges of the segment are fastened with screws or bolted joints. Finally, the space between the soil and the steel sheet is covered with sand or fine gravel.
Ground hearth
When planning to make a hearth on a personal plot, it is not at all necessary to prepare a foundation pit for a future fire. If desired, you can make a ground structure. A good basis for such a hearth will be a reinforced concrete flower girl or circles forwell. You can install the product on the ground or place stones and refractory bricks in the ground in advance, which will serve as a solid foundation for installing the structure.
In this case, there is no need to lay out the area around the fire with bricks, tiles, and other materials. The main thing is to pre-clear the site and install any suitable reinforced concrete container of arbitrary shape, which will play the role of a fire pit.
Decoration of the area around the hearth
After the hearth for the fire in the country house is completely laid out with your own hands, you should take care of the finishing design of the building. The ground around the fire is sprinkled with pebbles or gravel. Vegetation is preliminarily removed around the site at a distance of about 2-3 meters. Such decisions will subsequently help to avoid starting a fire.
To protect the stone, brick or tile hearth lining from external influences, if provided in the plan, a sealant is applied to it. It also allows the cement to maintain its integrity and not fall apart or crack in the sun.
Additionally, you can take care of the arrangement of the surrounding area. A small depression of the order of 8-10 cm is dug around the hearth. Geotextiles are laid in the latter, on top of which the same gravel is poured. Some homeowners do not like small stones that can get into shoes. Therefore, another, denser material can be laid on geotextiles, on which it will be convenient to place chairs, tables, benches,other.
