Outdoor fireplaces extend your outdoor living season. If you just love to be outside outdoor fireplaces and fire pits as a part of your patio or deck light up and warm up what would be cold nights. Instead of sitting inside you are outside breathing fresh air, chatting with friends, your family or just taking time to your self while enjoying the outdoors. An outdoor fireplace can be a complicated project or build, or something quite simple as a fire pit ring set on a lawn. Let’s go through different types of outdoor fireplaces and firepits to help find what best fits your needs.

For a big project you could construct a outdoor wood burning fireplace with brick or stone in the traditional method. That is a lot of work and expense. These days the better way to do it is to buy a prefabricated outdoor stainless-steel fireplace, chimney pipe, then build a wood frame around the factory built fireplace and finish with a stone veneer. This method has quite a few advantages over a traditional full masonry style fireplace, such as the cost of labor, works better in general, and the weight is less.

The easiest way to create an outdoor gas fireplace is a factory built vent-free gas fireplace. The advantage of an outdoor gas fireplace includes ease of use, no smoke and you do not need a chimney stack. Typically, an installation would entail purchasing an outdoor fireplace, running a gas line to the location as well as electric on some models, then building an enclosure around the fireplace and finishing with stone typically.

Gas fire tables, fire bowls, and fire pit burners.

If you have a wood or composite deck, patio and want an easy way to have fire at the press of a button or click of a lighter, without doing construction, a gas fire table or fire bowl is the way to go. Most fire tables have access doors to contain a propane tank, so you do not need to run a gas line, so no construction is needed. However, if you are more of the creative type, you can construct the firepit of your dreams typically using masonry construction and install a gas fire pit burner. Outdoor firepit burners come in many sizes from small for a small space to very large that would be suitable for a hotel or resort. Typically, what determines the cost other than size on fire pit burners is the ignition type. Firepit burner ignition types can be summed up as 3 types in general.

1. Match Lit - this is as simple as it sounds. There is a valve that has to be opened then you light by throwing a match or with a grill lighter.
2. Millivolt / Standing Pilot - there are advantages and disadvantages. The major advantage is: if the wind blows out the flame, it turns off the gas. Next advantage is: it allows the user to turn the fireplace on with a wall switch or remote control. The slight disadvantage is the thermocouples tend not to last as long in outdoor fireplaces as indoor fireplaces. However, these are typically easy to replace and very inexpensive.
3. Electronic Ignition otherwise known as IPI. These gas firepits and fireplaces use either a 120vac line or battery power to light the pilot light, and main burner using a switch or remote control. These outdoor gas fireplaces and gas firepits are the easiest to use, most efficient and may offer the most features. Many outdoor gas fireplaces with IPI or electronic ignition offer LED lighting in the ember bed offering a modern look with different colors, often have standard remote controls and without lighting a pilot offers ease of button click on and off use. This system clearly is the best for a more high-end project, but it does have more ways to fail. Although generally these outdoor gas fireplaces are reliable and easier to use, keep in mind the more complicated a fireplace system is, the more opportunity there is to fail.

Finally, my opinion on the 3 outdoor gas fireplace ignition types and wood burning options for outdoor fireplaces. This is a bit of a tough decision, and a lot of this also applies to indoor gas fireplaces as well.
Match Lit outdoor gas fireplaces, firepit burners and fire tables are great because it is so simple and always work unless you have an orifice blockage. However, with a match lit system with no safety pilot if the flame blows out the gas continues to flow.
Standing Pilot, safe and generally quite reliable - turns gas off if pilot goes out and easy to use if pilot is lit is already on.
Electronic Ignition - always a touch of a button bells and whistles available and super easy. I can fix any of these so electronic (IPI) would be my choice but for most people standing pilot would be best because it is super reliable and if it breaks, it is easy to replace an inexpensive thermocouple.

Here at fireplacesrus.net we offer honest opinions on all of our products from decades of experience in sales and installations so feel free to contact us for any info. We offer gas fireplace and fire pits from the following brands. Outdoor Lifestyles, Barbara Jean, Carol Rose, American Fyre Designs, Napoleon, Outdoor Greatroom , Superior fireplaces, Majestic Fireplaces, HPC, Outdoor Plus , Firegear Outdoors, Grand Canyon , Blaze Firepits and more.