Circle vs Square Fire Pit | This or That DIY | Concrete and Stone Fire Pits

Hi welcome to the woods fans it's Melissa Woods. Today I'm going to be doing another this or that video this time comparing the two different styles of fire pits that I've made in the past. If you've been following my channel for a while you probably know that I have made both a traditional circle fire pit and then last year I made a more modern square shaped fire pit. And that's probably the biggest difference between the two is the shape. So in my opinion the square one is more my modern style and it's a little more unique because you don't see it as often. But I want to touch on the other differences between these two fire pits and their construction in this video in hopes that I can help you DIY your own fire pit and enjoy your backyard more. Let's start out with the base. So with the first fire pit that I did I had access to sand because we lived by a beach like a lake beach access. And so I just grabbed some sand to help with the leveling of each of the blocks for the fire pit. It's super important that you get all your blocks level when building a fire pit so that the future rows of blocks all work together and they're not you know falling over. But you don't necessarily need sand to do this. The reason that for my second version, the square fire pit, I didn't worry about using sand and I just dug up and then tamped down the dirt was because I wasn't really worried about the dirt being flammable in the same way that the sand wasn't flammable. And I didn't feel like I needed help in leveling because the dirt was just as easy to make fluffy again, move around as I needed, and then tamp it down where it was level. Another major difference is the actual blocks that I used for these fire pits. With the first one that's a circular design, it was actually a fire pit kit that I got from a building supply store local to me and they were on sale for a dollar a brick. So these were cement, they weren't like fire brick specially you know designed to withstand heat. So in a lot of ways they were similar to the construction of my second version of a fire pit in which I tried to use a material that was accessible to everybody regardless of where you live and that is foundation cinder blocks basically. So these blocks you can find anywhere at any hardware store because they're made to stack together to build the foundation for houses. Now I did go through the whole palette and look for the end blocks so that they were flat on both sides, they didn't have ridges, but you theoretically could plan a little different than me and make the ridges work so that each of your cinder blocks kind of connects together and you would only need ones that had a flat end for the corners of the square pit. Now I want to talk about expense. Both of my fire pit designs have been very very inexpensive. The first one I got for only a dollar a brick and that's because like I said the fire pit kit from the building materials store was on sale. Usually these are more expensive and they would price closer to $120ish but I got mine just for $63 and then I hauled it myself. So very inexpensive. And then with the second one my pit design cost around $160 and the majority of that cost was the liner itself. You can find that liner linked in the description of this video. I'm going to talk about that next but basically I felt the liner was necessary and so I used much less expensive materials in the blocks. Again, priced at like 80 cents for a cinder block and then I think the patio papers were like $1.20 to finish off the top and make it have kind of a top cap that looked really nice. And so it was less than $30 for me to get the cement blocks and then the liner. So now why did I use a liner with my second design of a fire pit? The reason is because cement, when it's heated, tends to crack and sometimes pieces of the cement, maybe there's little rocks in there and then some of the aggregate, it bursts under pressure. So I didn't really want that to happen and to be honest I haven't owned either of these fire pits long enough to tell if this is going to be a problem long term but I do know that a metal liner like the one I put in my second design in the square fire pit protects the cement against the heat. And especially in my square fire pit design, lining up 8 inch by 8 inch by 16 inch cinder blocks next to each other creates a square that is a few inches larger than the 36 inch fire pit metal liner that I bought. So in that way the lip of the liner balances on the square made by the cinder blocks and there is a couple inches of space between the cement block and the liner. This allows for heat dissipation and it's really good because then I'm not having extreme heat exposed to the cement and it's less likely that my cement form will crack or burst or break in the future. Overall minor differences but I hope that you learned something about building a fire pit in this video and of course I want to know in the comments which one did you like better and why? What did you think was a better design or which one did you just like the look of more? Let me know below and if you need any help building your fire pit I'm happy to answer any questions in the comments. Thanks so much for watching, we'll catch you again next time on Welcome to the Woods for this or that DIY!