you know what I love it's sitting around a fire pit with your family but you know what can really ruin it is smoke and I'm going to fix that and I did three years ago when I built this the first DIY smokeless fire pit built on YouTube but I don't like it anymore so I'm going to remake it just like the Romans would using concrete welcome to Hackman y'all originally I was going to build the concrete form for this fire pit out of wood but then it hit me but then it hit not Everyone likes working with wood and I'd feel obligated to store a big wooden form for years to come well I can build this out of XPS foam and freely throw it away when I'm finished I know that I'm going to be 16 in tall but I need the circumference my diameter is 52 in I multiply that time Pi which is 3.14 I come up to 163 and 1/4 in these pieces are 96 in long- 96 in 67 and a/4 so I'm going to need to attach one 96 in piece and one 67 and 1/4 in piece I went ahead and cut off this extra piece that I'm going to use kind of as a mending plate you could call it uh whenever I did the original smokeless fire pit when I built the forms for the top I used regular spray contact adhesive and you have to be very careful because it'll eat this foam but since then I have found this 3M 78 and it is specifically for on polystyrene foam and it works like a champ I used it whenever I built the camper so that's what we're going to use if your foam sheets have that clear plastic sheathing on top of it make sure you pull that off like I did earlier otherwise that's going to you know affect how well this holds I think it probably would have been a good idea if I'd have actually tried this and found out if it actually worked before I just decided to start filming but hey you're on this ride along with me is it going to work I have no idea just like regular contact cement by the way you just have to let each piece that you've sprayed dry to become slightly tacky and then you can put them together I did that backwards luckily I was able to take it back apart and flip it around to get everything on the right side now just need to add an extra layer around the outside for extra strength and the good thing is after that big mishap surely we're done having problems and it should be smooth sailing surely after that mishap we should have no more problems and it should be smooth sailing thanks to my tbec tape use duct tape if you like it finally dawned on me whenever I realized hey I've got to actually make a smaller Circle to fit inside that big one and if I had a problem with that how am I going to get this one to work heat my friend heat is the answer by using the heat gun I was able to make this Bend and actually hold it shap shoot y'all better a red neckar rise you didn't think it would work please I mean it's amazing what some ratchet straps will do for you and ain't going nowhere is it going to last throughout the entire process these are going to be my air holes and these are 2in pipe I actually thought this all out and I I bought check it out I went out and bought a brand new hole saw so I could pass the pipe through nice and easy and then I like an idiot put the ratchet straps on before so they're just wedged in there but they'll be fine I've also driven some pieces of rebar down and some wooden staks to help keep the circle shape I leveled everything up then drove Stakes around the outside of the perimeter Circle so I'm on the inside on the inside Perimeter outside on the outside now I'm driving some rebar staks in to add strength to the fire pit itself this bottle is filled with vegetable oil and this is going to be my release agent look at all that concrete my back is just screaming with anticipation except today Old Uncle Hax has a trick up his sleeve feel free to mix this by hand or use you know one of those traditional little small cement mixers but I got to tell you this Mud Mixer is freaking amazing Mud Mixer claims that their machine is twice as fast as mixing by hand I think they're full of baloney because this thing easily is four times as fast it looks like it's coming out of there slow and you think how could that possibly work well but you can barely keep up with it this thing saved us an incredible amount of time combined with a strong wife you can tackle just about any project you'd want with this thing I am I mean I it's probably one of my favorite tools that I've gotten over the last several years it's powered by an electric motor so I just brought a battery Bank out and plugged it into that to make things super simple all you do is drop the bags in the top the Mud Mixer mixes it automatically it's got a built-in hose so I can rinse my hands off rinse the Mud Mixer off when the project was done and hey if you're interested I'll put a link in the description for Mud Mixer I don't have an affiliate link but they did send me this machine so thanks to them I got lots of concrete projects coming up I use a sawall or a reciprocating saw if you're fancy pinkies up everybody to vibrate the concrete and get the bubbles to the top before going any further let's touch on some vital elements crucial for smokeless fire pit success a fire has specific needs fuel and oxygen in the case of a fire pit wood serves as the fuel but why do you get the smoke have you ever seen a vehicle blowing thick black smoke out the exhaust well that happens when the fuel to air ratio is off balance the engine is getting too much fuel and not enough air and so the black smoke coming out the exhaust is unburned fuel similarly a fire pit produces smoke due to incomplete combustion a smokeless fire pit operates differently however featuring an outer chamber that allows fresh air to enter from the low exterior holes and become superheated as it ascends now the hot air escapes through the top holes around the upper perimeter of the smokeless fire pit that creates a secondary burn that consumes the unburned fuel or smoke now the holes at the bottom also let air in to feed the fire now one component most people Miss is the top ring which directs air flow over the fire and I addressed that in my video three years ago so we want to make sure that we pay attention to all of those aspects to make sure that we have the most successful smokeless fire pit experience this is the fire pit ring I'm going to be using it's the same type I used three years ago on the first smokeless fire pit build I like this one for a few reasons it's the cheapest one you can get it's 12 in tall as opposed to a lot of them are 10 in tall and it's it's got this you know this ring around the top that starts to create that upper ring that Rim like I talked about earlier it does cost 30% more than it did 3 years ago but concrete is twice as expensive as it was 3 years ago so I guess that's not terrible I don't know what you call these things a soft tape measure a flexible tape I don't know it's what I'm using and I'm going to Mark out every 3 in around the top of this fire pi
