Building a fire pit...

[Buckethead]

Not sure if I need to use fire-brick in the bottom of it.  Plan on "breaking it in" this coming weekend.  Anyone here is invited down, wife/kids out of town for the entire week....

I would plan on doing so just to be on the safe side. That concrete base is likely to have a decent amount of water left in it. Last thing you want to do is get the family all gathered around and then start flinging hot concrete chips at them. Fun tho that would be.

[MendoDave]

I used 17 80# bags of quick crete, some re-bar, to make the base.  It's ~7.5' in diameter.

I used/recycled castle-wall stone that was local and unused/abandoned for years.  I bought a bag of mortar and some cap stones to make this:



It's "great dane" approved

I used ~80 of the blocks, 17 of the capstones, a large bag of mortar, and 17 80# bags of quick-crete.  Cost was around $75 as I had most of the stone for free.  Would have been ~$125 to buy it all (estimate).  It's large enough to burn a pallet easily, so I anticipate lighting a bunch of things on fire 

Not sure if I need to use fire-brick in the bottom of it.  Plan on "breaking it in" this coming weekend.  Anyone here is invited down, wife/kids out of town for the entire week....

I built mine pretty much like yours only just bare dirt base two rows high and no mortar or rebar. That was 4 or 5 years ago and its just fine. I think I scooped it out once and dumped the ashes in the swamp.

[TAftonomos]

Did I mention my back hurts today?

[ducpainter]

Did I mention my back hurts today?

sorry...

you just cracked me up.