Thursday, August 4, 2011

Lava Rock or Glass chips in fire pits

By Lee Miller


Recently I received an email from an individual who had a fascinating problem and I want to share it with you because you may of faced the exact same thing. His email was this:

We built a natural gas fire pit and put a lot of colored glass chips in it. It works great, looks amazing but is worthless for roasting marshmallows : (.

It feels like an open flame just lights the marshmallows ... We need coals. But I don't want to put wood in and handle the ashes.

Proposals?

Thanks!

We here at Lava Rocks for Fire Pits.com never had a question or problem of this nature presented to us, but on reflexion and talking about it with our staff this was our answer to this problem. We had seen it done before but only by two folk.

our return email went as follows:

Your e-mail was interesting, we had not ever heard about this kind of problem before.

Glass chips make for a pretty fire, one where you wouldn't need to mess it up with food drippings like marshmallows or hotdogs and so on. And glass won't hold heat very well; or reflect radiant heat also.

Lava rock seems to get only better with age thanks to the carbon build up caused from food burn to a "carbon crisp" (and lava rock hides these crumbs because the rock is not so uniform in size and color and is penetrable). The heat built up in the lava rock with natural gas or propane radiates better for roasting those party favorites due to the thin walls of the lava rocks ' micro caves, often turning them growing red (thus making ember like effects).

It all reduces down to a couple things you need to decide for yourself, and only you can answer them. Are you wanting a pretty fire pit or a handy fun fire pit? Or better why not both?

I've seen both functions built into the same fire pit.

In this one case we have seen, they put a double gas ring in the pit with one rings being larger in diameter than the other. And depending on your taste and style you are trying for, they put colored glass chips in the middle over the littler gas ring and lava rock on the outside over the larger diameter gas ring.

What this did was kind of cool. When these people wanted just pretty flames they turned on the center gas ring which was under the glass chips; but when they wanted a fun roasting flame they might turn on the larger outside ring, the one under the lava rock.

This may be something to think about.

I only wish you all the best and have fun with this.

Lee

Building a backyard fire pit is fun and still can be helpful. There is not any need to sacrifice one for the other when you can have both. I'm hoping this document lets you see that you can create a extremely unique and fun fire pit for you own yard. Its something new to consider.






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