We've had a number of fire pits at the house, one that was too near the tree line (too many bugs), one that is now the shallow end of the pool (difficult to keep alight), and the chiminea which is still at at top of the garden. With the hot tub we wanted to have a fire pit close so that you could jump out of the tub and sit round the fire.
There are plenty of nice fire pits for sale, but we wanted something a little different. While certainly not original (
Google search) I think the washing machine fire pit looks great.
Getting the tub out was fairly involved (the machine came from the transfer station) and involved judicious use of a 5lb hammer and an angle grinder. I painted it with high temp black paint, but even after one fire it's showing indications that it didn't stick to the enamel very well. I'm going to continue looking out for a stainless drum. There's sand in the bottom to help protect the metal a little.
Leveling the surround and ring (lawn edging) was also a longer process on our slope. There's still some more earth work I need to do for safer seating.
The fire flickering through the the hole pattern looks great and the steel radiates a good amount of heat. The holes and the shape also really seem to create a chimney effect to take the smoke higher.
I want to build a spark catcher so that we can leave it to die safely overnight and to grow some grass around it I guess.
