The Journal · Field Notes
Almost every fire pit conversation we have starts here, and it is worth settling early, because it changes what gets built and what it costs.
We build both and we are not going to tell you one is better. They are good at different things and they annoy you in different ways. What follows is the honest version of each, including the running cost math, which usually comes out backwards from what people expect.
A gas fire pit lights with a switch or a key and shuts off the same way. No smoke, no ash, nothing to buy or store. A wood burning fire pit asks more of you: you load it, light it, and clean it out afterward.
That difference decides most of it. A gas fire pit gets used with ease any night of the week, while a wood burning fire pit is typically saved for special occasions or the weekends. Neither is the wrong answer, but be honest with yourself about which one you are describing when you picture using it.
Some people want to build the fire. Splitting kindling, getting it going, watching it burn down. If that sounds like the good part, wood is your answer and the extra work is not really work. If it sounds like a chore standing between you and sitting down, you want gas.
Continue: what they cost to run
This is where people guess wrong. Everyone assumes wood is the cheap one to run, and if you are buying firewood at the hardware store, it is not.
Natural gas in Missouri and Kansas averages around $15 per thousand cubic feet. A 100,000 BTU burner, which is a normal size for a residential fire pit, works out to somewhere around $1.25 to $1.50 an hour. A three hour evening costs about four dollars.
Firewood runs about $7 a bundle at the hardware store, and a bundle does not go far. Call it two for an evening and you are at fourteen dollars for the same three hours, which is where buying wood in small quantities stops being the cheap option.
Wood only wins on running cost when you buy it by the cord, split your own, or have a supply. If bundles are the plan, gas is the cheaper fire.
If natural gas is not available at your house, propane is the fallback, and it costs roughly twice as much per unit of heat when it is delivered in bulk. Exchange tanks from a cage outside the hardware store are far worse again, partly because they are filled to about fifteen pounds rather than twenty. On a good sized burner one of those will not reliably get you through a single evening.
Continue: running the lineA wood burning fire pit costs less to build, and the reason is simple. There is no gas line to run.
For a gas fire pit, a line has to come from the house out to wherever the pit will sit, which means trenching across the yard and a plumber on the job. That work is a real part of the budget and it scales with distance, so a pit at the back of the property costs more than one just off the patio.
There is also more going on inside a gas pit than people realize. Propane is heavier than air, so it sinks and can pool inside an enclosure, which is why a gas fire pit needs ventilation built into the structure rather than being sealed up. It is one of the reasons a gas pit is a built thing and not a bowl you set down.
The one bit of gas fire pit maintenance worth knowing in this climate. Keep the burner pan drainage clear and the drain valves open through the winter. Blocked drainage means water sits inside, freezes, and goes to work on the burner and the pan.
Continue: dealing with smoke
Smoke is the complaint we hear most about wood burning pits, and it is a fair one. Everybody ends up moving their chair at some point, and wet or green wood makes it considerably worse than seasoned wood does.
Smokeless inserts help a great deal here. They pull air through a double wall and feed it back in above the fire, which burns off much of what would otherwise leave as smoke. They are effective, but the name oversells them. Every fire smokes for the first several minutes before the insert comes up to temperature, and damp wood will smoke whatever hardware is around it. Expect a lot less smoke, not none.
We can build one into a masonry fire pit, so you get the stone or paver surround you wanted with the insert doing the work underneath. The thing that matters on that build is air. The insert has to sit with clear space beneath it and nothing packed against the bottom, because that airflow is the whole mechanism. Bedded tight into sand it becomes an ordinary fire pit with an expensive liner in it.
If smoke is the only thing pushing you toward gas, this is worth a conversation before you decide.
Before spending anything on hardware, burn properly seasoned wood. A lot of what people blame on their fire pit is really moisture in the wood, and the difference between a well dried split and something cut last spring is not subtle.
Continue: cookingWood wins this one outright. Add a cooking grate over a wood burning pit and you have somewhere to cook, and the wood smoke is the whole reason to do it.
Gas fire pits are a different story, and the answer is more definite than most people expect. They are listed as decorative appliances, not cooking appliances. Marshmallows over the flame are fine, which covers what most families actually want. Anything with grease in it is not, because the drippings land in the fire glass or lava rock and stay there.
If cooking outside is a real goal, the answer is a grill station or an outdoor kitchen alongside the fire pit, not the fire pit doing double duty.
Wood looks like the cheap fire until you are buying it by the bundle.
Gas costs more to build and less to run. Wood costs less to build and, if you are buying bundles, more to run. Gas gets used more often because it is easy. Wood gives you a real fire and something to cook over.
We build both, so whichever way you land, come talk it through. Our fire pit page has the shapes, the sizes and what they cost.
Forty-five minutes on site with our designer is all it takes to see what is possible. No pressure, no hard sell.
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