Okay so fair, I wasn’t expecting to have strong feelings about charcoal in a fire pit but apparently I am that person, three weekends into our fire pit saga and I’ve found myself curiously invested in having an opinion on this. Here we are.
It began innocently enough, we bought a fire pit for the communal area at the back of our flat block, a decent one this time, not the cheap bucket thing from Wilkos, a proper steel bowl model that made me donate an eyebrow worth of hourly wage to my bank account when it rang me up about it. And within about ten seconds of it landing on our shared patio (still in the packaging, this was literally the start) someone asked in the WhatsApp chat “can we not just fill this up with charcoal and be done with faffing about lighting wood?” receiving one response, a picture of someone’s patio tiles from their previous home ablaze, no comment. Fair enough.
See because my knee jerk reaction, what sprung into my mind immediately was yes OBVIOUSLY why would you not fill it full of charcoal, fire but less effort basically, you use it for BBQ’s, it’s essentially the same thing the fire pit’s just a bigger less grilled food orientated version of it! Sorted. Was ready to chalk this one up as a learning experience and move on.
Then I tried it.
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And now I have a lot to say about it.
Yes of course you can, but it’s not the fire you applied for and nobody tells you about maintenance.
So quick answer to start with, because that’s probably why you’re here. Yes. Yes you can put charcoal in a fire pit. It won’t explode. Your landlord will not appear from behind a bush to break it over your ankle yelling about fire insurance. It’s fine. But here’s the thing nobody discusses when you get a fire pit, regardless of whether you use charcoal or wood, they both react differently in the same bowl and treat them like they’re the same is a recipe for disappointment.
Wood burns with flair. The noise it makes crackling away, the flames that actually go up instead of just lying there, that’s the bit everyone gathers around your phone for when you’re filming your fire to send to the gang chat because quite frankly it looks fucking epic on camera. Bright, and dynamic, like a big campfire you’re roasting sausages over. Charcoal doesn’t do any of that, when charcoal’s going you’ll swear it just glowers at you, low and steady with barely a flame to speak of, which I’m clearly exaggerating about fire but trust me, when you light your first packet of charcoal waiting for a wood fire you will feel disappointed that something isn’t happening. It’s not, it’s just doing it’s own thing over here.
The thing that actually ruined mine for me though was airflow. Our fire pit has what is known as a mesh base which, as I later discovered through Googling things very succinctly, is the entire reason you get one. It lets air travel up through your charcoal so it doesn’t essentially choke itself after half an hour like it wanted to on the first attempt. If your fire bowl has no holes, if it’s fully solid bottom, you’ll be fighting a losing battle trying to keep charcoal lit in there and end up chucking half a bottle of lighter fluid on it out of spite unless you properly resurface again. Don’t do that. That’s not a charcoal firepit, that’s a attempting to burn down your flat fire.
Oh god and while we’re on the topic of charcoal. Self lighting charcoal, don’t get me started on self lighting charcoal. SKIP TO THE NEXT SECTION. STAPLED TO THE SEAT PLEASE. OKAY.
Fine, yes. Tried it because it was £2 cheaper at our local shop and it literally burns with a chemical tang that you can taste in the air around you. Not good charcoal, warm and dry reaching flavour, bad like, “I don’t know why the air smells like someone projects carsynthesis lessons in here” chemical. Invest in proper lumpwood or your briquettes but also spend the extra £5 on a chimney starter. They’re basically these skinny metal cylinders you stick your charcoal in, light the end bit and when it’s lit enough you tip it in. Saved me from buying junk charcoal I did not need. Took me half an hour of scrolling through Amazon to mentally accept I’d wasted money but we are where we are.
Charcoal ash is the worst kept secret.
So here’s where my mild ‘yeah mate whatever sounds fun’ attitude swung to ‘hang on buckaroo I think I’ve actually got opinions on this’ and it’s ash. Ash. Charcoal ash is the thickness of sea coal and it gets everywhere, enough that I started eyeing up our shared patio slabs and considering painting them a different colour so I didn’t stress about it damaging them when we move out two years down the line. We might not even get moved correctly, I was that stressed about charcoal ash.
Oh and it stains. Not right away! It stains. Leave a pile of wet charcoal ash on a beige patio slab over a weekend and you’ll come back to a ghost mark that just doesn’t fully brush away.
Texted some mates a photo of it in the group chat received one “oh no” back and didn’t hear anything else on the matter.
Best encapsulation of how you feel about it ever.
Sweep it up before it dries and you’re not fighting a losing battle against patio tiles that decide to keep every speck of ash they come into contact with for the next few months.
Also when I say hot, I mean HOT. Warm charcoal ash will still burn you if you touch it straight out the bowl. Like, we’re talking leave it for hours hours burns you if you touch it charcoal. Not ten minutes like I would’ve naively assumed. It needs to go in something metal, cool down fully and then even we’re talking about chucking it in your house bins. Doesn’t mix well with your fireplace or woodpile either, learnt that through…experience.
tl;dr, yeah you can and yes charcoal absolutely works in a fire pit but come at it with the correct expectations; low and slow rather than raging fiery beast, and do the bare minimum around it and it can behave. Like, I still use ours for both now, like I said wood if I’m going for the visuals, charcoal if I legitimately want heat that lasts more than twenty minutes but I’ve stopped trying to make one replace the other. It’s not meant to.
