I Built 3 Fire-pits (5 Min - 5 Hr - 5 Day)

Some of my best memories were made over a campfire. Whether sharing a nice beverage with a close friend to family hangouts by the fire, fire pits were there to bring us all together. But there's so many different ranges from quick little kits you can buy at the store to sophisticated smokeless fire pits like this. Well, today we'll be building three different fire pits, 5 minute, 5 hour, and 5day to see which method is best. Let's get into it. To make sure I give myself a an honest fair chance here, I got my timer here. I got all my supplies here. Kyle's going to be my clock watcher. We'll set the clock. Are we ready? Get our little stretch going here. Don't pull a hammy or anything. Oh, I should get gloves. That should be probably a good idea. Three, two, one, go. All right, we got to we got to move these in quantity. Let's see. Let's see. Let's see. I should be hauling these and just throwing them. That would be better. So, I know it should be about 10 bricks per layer. No time to stack them yet. Getting winded already. Should have done this with a lighter challenge. Should be a 34 in diameter. What was that? 2 4 6 8 10. What is this? 2 4 6 8 10 Okay, stack stack. Stick stack stack. How we doing on time? >> I think you're like 4 minutes. >> 4 minutes. We got 2 minutes left. I'm losing steam. This should be enough. Well, I need time to still get my fire pad ring. I ripped my hoodie. It's nothing. My calculations are off. Crap. Time. I'm dead. Why did I do this? Should have done this with something else. I don't know if the alarm's not going off. 33 seconds. We're ahead of schedule. Well, we did it. We got our first 5minute fire pit in. I need an inhaler. Well, there you go. Five minute fire pit. Altogether, the budget was 200 bucks with the ring and the stone. You can bust it out in Well, don't do it in five minutes. give yourself a little time, but easy, DIY, approachable, you can do it like right now. So, for the 5h hour build, it's going to be different. It's I found this picture on Pinterest. It looks so sick. It was like in the ground. Uh, which we're going to be building at offsite. We're going to be building at my A-frame cabin. We're going to need some supplies. We're going to need some mortar. We need something to spread that mortar. Get one of these. Something to mix the mortar. I don't even know what kind of mortar I'm supposed to use on this. I'm trying to remember if type N is stronger than type S. We found the fire brick. It's not red though, which is interesting. I also thought fire brick was red. This one's broken. Now, how many do we need? Don't know. We'll eyeball it. Enrique Glaciius playing over the PA system at Home Depot. Kyle, do you ever have Enrique Glaciius CDs? >> No, I don't know who that is. I had two of them. >> It's kind of embarrassing. Enrique glaciius was dope, man. Bam. I think I wanted to find some flag stone, but their flag stone's kind of small. So, I think we're going to make this fire pit square. Oh, I like that. Do I look like a complete lunatic right now just laying out pavers at Home Depot? All right, let's pack it up. We got about an hour and a half drive. You don't think you should get some extras of anything? >> Extras? We don't need no s stinking extras, you know, Kyle. We uh we can always adapt Q like 2 hours from now. We should have got extras. >> We got extras. >> So, at the cabin today, I like to come out here to check up on the place, make sure, you know, everything's up to par. No hooligans came out here to start messing with the place. These steps are holding up great. I don't know why people thought that they're going to slide off the the hill. I mean, we rebarred everything and they're all tied into everything and all these comments were like, "Oh, that thing is going to slide down." Well, it didn't. It's still here. It's awesome. But look how crazy the weeds are getting here. This is all like excavated land. And I mean, the hell is this? That looks like stuff from Jurassic Park. These are the type of weeds. I bet you Roundup won't even touch this. I mean, it's it's it's just going to laugh at it. Be like, "Oh, cute, dude. Freaking have to send a F-16 with bombs on this thing for these weeds to go away, but it's filling in nicely. Pretty soon, all of this is just going to be weeds, and it's cheaper than getting a lawn. I guess this would be annoying to try to mow with your lawn mower." Dude, I have not seen this like that. My neighbors, I mean, it looked like a forest. Like everything over there, this is what it used to look like. Oh, you can actually see you see all that over there where the property land ends, that's all what this was. And turns out that they had to cut everything down because the bank wouldn't insure the house. So, unless you cut down all of your vegetation due to fire hazards, you can't get insurance on your property. So, all of my neighbors started cutting down. Fortunately, this is a new construction, so I don't have it here. But that's Could you imagine cutting all that and then trying to haul it away, too? That's a crazy honeydew list. That's above my pay grade. Or blood pressure. Welcome to the cabin. If you are new to the channel, you don't know what I'm talking about. We spent about a year building this A-frame cabin. It's about an hour and a half outside of town, and it's awesome. But it has also an awesome view. And what I'm thinking is we put a fire pit right here that you get to enjoy those mountains right there. I could just imagine sitting here with a little bourbon overlooking those mountains there. But we're here to build a fire pit based off this one that I found online. The guy dug a hole. He has all of these uh fire bricks inside of it and then all this decor stone around. My situation is a little bit different just because we're working with a slope, but instead of building it where you sit around it, I'm thinking we build it so you have a cool view. So, this is probably a good spot to start. We're not going to do anything crazy. Uh we'll do like a 34 in radius possibly. And that will give us a sufficient amount. Yeah, let's go 36. Let's live a little. All right, this is a 5h hour one. Not too much sweating right now. It's 12:30, so we have plenty of time to get this thing done. I think all the stuff that I'm going to dig out, I'm going to use as a backing for it so that the fire pit itself is not sloped. Change my mind. We got to move it back a little bit. Right here is going to be better. It's going to be more centered with the deck. Okay. So 30 in. So fire pit's going to be 30 by 30. So each pa around is uh 15 1/2 in. So essentially 30x 30 is going to be the center here. I won't really want to avoid getting too much soil out just because I want to be able to have those papers lay on top. Now, yes, you could always back fill. Sure. But your boy forgot a tamper. So, we're going to be using our boots for stomping today if we need to. >> I'm sure that won't be the only thing you forgot. >> Probably. You're not wrong. I'm sure I forgot something. We'll find out about it at a very inconvenient moment. But should we do a challenge then? I mean, the river on the way up was looking pretty frosty. >> We want to do like a cold plunge in the river. If there's something else that I forget that I need to do this, I have to cold plunge into a river. >> Yeah, not just any river though, but the cold river that we just uh pass. >> We can do the the Boise River for sure. All right, let's do that. That sounds miserable. Uh but okay, if if there's anything else I'm missing, I have to co-plench in the river. Um, so make sure you watch this video to the end cuz we'll see if that ends up happening. I hope not. That's going to suck. What's the time limit though? You think you could do 5 minutes? >> 5 minutes? I I could I I could do three. And even then, that's a lot. Let me do 1 minute. 3 minutes in running river water. 3 minutes. I'll do I'll do 3 minutes up to my neck. Cold plunge. That seems fair. Why do we come up with these dumb challenges? They're miserable. the six eggs that I drank last time. That was disgusting. Doesn't make sense. It says uh the pay is 71° and the Boisey River is 61. Doesn't really make sense to me. All right, I'm pretty happy with my gradient here. Now, what we're going to start doing is we're going to lay the fire brick down first and then start building our walls around it. Throw some rock in here for easier leveling. I'm having this weird feeling that we didn't get enough fire brick. I have a few more pieces in my truck, but there's not a whole lot. Okay, I think that's just the right amount. However, I don't know if our top papers will accommodate, but we'll see. We'll see. This is uh nice and level. Um it's not sitting perfectly flat. I think if I was to bring a bag of sand, that would have been a clutch move, but this is this is good enough. We're going to start working on the frame. Originally, I was going to have the sitting on top, but if I have it on the bottom, that could work as a little reinforcement piece. However, we're using mortar to hold it together. and they're having to get stuck on the sides. Not a whole lot of meat here to have good contact. So, we're going to have to be doing this like two things at once. Slap some mortar in there, put some back fill, and hopefully this little house of cards doesn't fall apart before the mortar gets to set in. Lot of moving parts here, man. And there's mud. All right, let's mix some mortar up. I have a brilliant idea to help with the balancing of that. What if we just put half a bag of mortar down? It'll be like a nice little leveling bed. We're working with something now. There we go. This is going to work like paver base. I mean, it was the right idea. I don't know how how much better it looks unless I had those little two 1-in pipes I could lay down, use as a guard rail. Apart from that, this is just eyeballing it. Hey, I brought a hoe though. Didn't expect that one. Got everything thoroughly mixed. It has to I believe the word is flash where basically the the compound inside activates and then you got to mix it again and then it should be ready to go or else whatever the polymer that's in there doesn't really bind. So, let it bind, folks. I don't even know if this is going to work or not. Like that. It's what I've seen on TikTok. You know, you have a funny algorithm when you're watching masonry videos. Oh, let's get some on the bottom. So, another thing is when you're working with mortar, keep in mind I'm no expert with mortar, but from my research that I've done projects in the past, when you put it on, put on like about an inch or so, create these little cuts, and that's going to create little suction pressure helping hold it together. I like that. That's a good squeeze out right there. I'm not too thrilled about that one, but this one's a good one. Get rid of the excess. Look at us. Just bunch of masons here. In my heart, for some reason, I keep being reminded of Mario. Why? No clue. He's not a brick layer. He's a freaking Italian plumber. But maybe because the the terrain that Mario is in. What's the name of that land? I don't know if if you're a diehard Mario fan, let me know what the name of the world that Mario lives in. I'm going to give you guys some ASMR here for you. Right, the mic's on my hand here. Isn't that satisfying? That sounds so good. I told you don't do any calculations or planning. The projects, they'll tell you what they want to do. And this tells me that's a perfect amount of brick. While this thing is drying, I'm going to start carefully back filling it. That way, we can see which way we want this cuz I'm assuming we're going to have to take all the soil that we brought here to make an even platform. So, very, very gently, let's do some back filling. Okay, so this part I'm not excited about because I laid out in Home Depot exactly my opening, but since we changed it due to the size or the amount of bricks we have, we got to see what this project tells us. It wants to do with the papers around it. Never gets old. Um, I'm sure we'll figure something out here. Let's try a couple of ways. Let's go. So, it's two. This is purely a dry fit right now. So don't this see this is the problem already. We have to have this thing almost like a little lip to it. I'd be okay with being flush but she doesn't want to line up. It's it's whatever way you cut it that's it's not working. So, uh, I guess my only option is to try to break the paper as it has this little perforated edges already. Um, hopefully it'll snap, get a nice clean look. But the problem is you'll see that gray concrete, you know, that they poured. It's not going to look good. So, maybe I don't know. Let's try that. I also didn't bring my angle grinder or anything to cut concrete. So, uh, add that to the list of what I didn't bring. I think the only way I could do this is if I sacrifice one block to use as my little edge here. That worked. It's actually not that terrible of a look. It almost looks intentional cuz it is. I threw it. That would have been nice right there. And if I buried that flush with the ground, I could work. Okay. And then this piece. Oh, that's a very nice one. Oh, let's switch this. That goes there. I'm still going to level it, so don't worry. Don't freak out on me yet. This one's We're cooking with something now. So, for the most part, just these two sides have overhang into the pit, which is great because nobody's really going to be on that side. Um, all that's left now here is to balance this sucker out. I don't like how it's all over the place. Well, there you have it. We still have 1 hour to spare on a 5h hour fire pit. I personally love how this turned out. Love the fact that it's fire brick inside. Nice and safe even on the walls. You could dig out a hole, but then you're going to have all the heat escaping. Not to mention, it's all going to start caving in on you. I will say though, we have an hour and a half drive home just to spare, thank God. But if you were to do this, I would recommend putting another ring around it using cinder block. What that will do is allow for you to actually mortar down these pavers and not having to sit them and balance them and waste a bunch of time. So that's my recommendation. 5 hours done. Moving on to the 5day ultimate fire build. Let's do it. So if you don't want to even lift a finger to build a fire pit, you can just buy one of these little gadgets. It's cool. For a couple hundred bucks, you could put them anywhere you want, like up front here with your morning coffee. Or one of my favorite things to do is either take a camping where there's a fire band, so you can actually have a safe thing. Or even better, every year when kids are trick-or-treating, we set it out in the front of the driveway, kids come up, we give them candy, we're enjoying a nice fire. It's the best. But what I love the best about fire pits in general, I mean, I'm building three of them for God's sake, is that whether you're sharing with a friend, great conversations, or you're by yourself, kids are sleeping, and you have this like internal conversations, uh, you start reflecting on things, things you do good, things you do bad, things you wish you did better. One of my favorite lines is, I am better than I was, and it basically turns into a self audit. And that's why I'm excited about talking about sponsors of today's video, BetterHelp. I end up thinking about patterns of behaviors or negative self-t talk maybe you know it depends on how I slept or how I ate or whether or not I worked out uh it all makes a big contributing factor so doing cold plunges and meditating and and having that internal conversation you end up realizing how hard it is to break these cycles and maybe what it might look like to open up the doors to get help and support from somebody who might know what you're going through. BetterHelp is on mission to simplify and make access to therapy a lot easier. In fact, so easy you can do from the comfort of your home. You know, before you always had to schedule an appointment, find somebody, go there, take time off, and hopefully they know what you're talking about or can relate or maybe you might not even like them. So, having a convenient opportunity like with BetterHelp to make it more approachable and accessible for a guy like me is an incredible thing. They'll help connect you with a licensed therapist that will not only listen but give you helpful advice and most importantly unbiased advice. It's incredibly simple. In fact, you just answer a few questions and you'll be matched with a therapist just within a couple of days. And if you don't like your therapist, you can easily switch your therapist for no additional cost. Look, with over 7,000 reviews and a 4.3 rating on Trustpilot, BetterHelp is a platform you can trust. So stop waiting. Click the link in the description or head to betterhelp.com/mrbuildit to get 10% off therapy your first month. Now I got a fire pit to build. Let's go. Moving on to the 5day fire pit build. We're back at my house and this fire pit took me 4 days to build. But there's a huge problem. It failed. It broke and I got a lot of nasty comments saying it looks unfinished. Well, today we're going to fix that. On day one, we created a mold using pink insulation foam. It was 1 in. I created an inner ring and an outer ring. I secured them all in place using just stakes just so they don't move on us. Then I put rebar just for added reinforcement. Now this part is where the fire pit failed later and we'll discuss more of it as we come. To create the first chamber of combustion, I put 2-in PVCs all the way around the fire pit where the fire will start sucking in nice cold air to start boosting it. On day two, I used a cement mixer to mix up 13 bags of concrete. I started pouring it all in place using a shovel and patting it down. Then using a reip saw to create as much vibration possible, releasing all the air bubbles out of the mold. I then threw ratchet straps around just to make sure this thing doesn't collapse on us and wrapped the entire pore with plastic over two days just to let it cure. I'm taking precautionary measures and adding some ratchet straps just cuz I mean we're dealing with 1 in foam. That's it. And some stakes that you know you know you can see them bending anyways. So didn't want any surprises here in the next I don't know 30 minutes before I start setting. Didn't want this thing just to crap on me and everything pouring out. Keeps the tears away. On day three, while the mold was curing, I started working on the inner firing. I found this firing for about 120 bucks, and I created 2-in holes all the way around the top of this firing in order for the second stage of combustion to take place. On day four, I removed my mold and the 2-in PVCs out. Then I inserted the firing and topped off the top with caps that are from decorative paperstone, securing them with a construction adhesive. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Today is day five and this is the fire pit we're working with. And let me tell you this, it works flawlessly. Absolutely smokeless fire pit. But here's where the problem lies. I have three giant cracks that are running along the perimeter of this fire pit. Three. Those are the areas where it didn't have any rebar. And the problem lies in couple of factors. The fire pit runs really hot and you need that in order to get a smokeless fire pit. It has to be a certain temperature to work appropriately. And number two, a lot of people said the fire pit doesn't look as cool as they imagined just because this section looks kind of bare and unfinished. And today we're going to try to solve both of those problems. And let me tell you how. To address the heat issue, we need to create some kind of insulation. I was going to use…