Fireside Outdoor pop up fire pit propane conversion? | 4WDTalk - Overlanding and offroad Forum
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Fireside Outdoor pop up fire pit propane conversion?

I've been slowly working on a DIY propane fire pit. Other projects made me back burner it but I want it finalized for my next trip. I did it for the same reason, fire restrictions. Some of the people I camp with have diffrent ones and I'm not happy with how most of them work.

My biggest obstacle has been flow rate. Most of the pieces I bought have built in safety valves or wont flow properly. Those are fine if you want a real low fire, I don't.

Your burner can be expensive if you don't search. All they are is stainless tube with holes. If you wanted square (ish) you can make one out of black pipe. You need an air mixer or you get soot. These are fairly cheap. Your tank end needs a high flow fitting without a safety valve. Hoses can have safety valves also so watch that. I haven't worked out my regulator but I will most likely use a manual valve for it.

On all but one of my friends fire pits, the fire goes almost out once it gets cold (flames about an inch high). The bottle tends to ice up and drop the pressure. This has been my biggest challenge. We also went through a four month hot spell. I need it cold to test things.
Over the last couple of years only a couple of fire pits don't seem to have this issue. That tells me the problem is in the build.
Once I get a bit farther, I'll update my thread.
 
Interesting, more to burning propane than I thought. I would have thought a simple pipe with proper holes drilled in it would do the trick. I've seen some of those 50 cal pits and there isn't much to them.
 
One of my buddies has a 50 cal ammo can box. As soon as it gets cold the fire drops to almost nothing. That particular trip, it was about 25 degrees. Only one of the fire pits worked at all.
If I'm all done and the fire still isnt good (when its cold) that means the propane is the issue. Lot's of companies make propane bottle heaters so I get the impression this is common. An issue I have is their brutally expensive. I found a cheaper alternative, grey water tank heaters. Way cheaper and warms to about 75 degrees. That would be plenty for my tank but, now I need a small 12 volt battery to power it.
Gawd, wood is so much easier.
 
We were starting to piece together a propane conversion kit for ours since we are finding that more and more wood fires are banned. We went to their website to order another ember mat and got to speaking to the customer rep and they told us that they were working on a propane conversion kit, so we stopped working on ours. That was well over a year ago and they still haven't come up with anything from the company. Our estimated cost to build ours was going to be around $250-300 using off the shelf and custom parts. We ended up just purchasing a dedicated propane firepit for $90 instead.
 
No, it was going to cost too much for our current usage model. Once we retire, we will probably do it just to save space, since we will be traveling full time for a while.
 
TomInOregon said:
No, it was going to cost too much for our current usage model. Once we retire, we will probably do it just to save space, since we will be traveling full time for a while.
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Yeah, seemed like the better economic move to make. I wonder what they will price their conversion kit, well IF they even offer a kit or they offer just a complete new burner for sale.
 
Interesting, thank you for sharing, I'm going to reach out to them tomorrow to see if they have plans for something yet.
 
OffGrid said:
Interesting, thank you for sharing, I'm going to reach out to them tomorrow to see if they have plans for something yet.
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Let me know what you find out. I can share links to what parts I found that could be used to make something yourself, but if you can work with a local metalworker, it would be much cheaper.
 
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