How to Line a Campfire Pit with Rocks: Online Guide to Camping & Fire Safety

Video Transcript

" Hi! This is Brian on behalf of expertvillage.com. As you can see here, we have gathered some rocks together to begin building a fire pit. One important thing to notice about these is that they are primarily volcanic in origin. You want to avoid sandstone rocks, if it all possible, especially rocks that you have pulled from a stream bed. Quite often it is very tempting to do so because they are right there, readily available. But quite often they become saturated with water and in the extreme heat it can be built up in the campfire and they have actually been known to explode and send shards of sharp rock out everywhere. Volcanic rocks are very dry and less likely to do that, so if you have them available that’s what your first choice should be. Now what we want to do with the rocks is we begin stacking them up on the edge of the pit we have done, in such a way that they form as tightly locking joints as possible to help prevent fire spreading out of the confines of the pit. You want to try to make it about a foot and a half to 2 feet high, if possible, and build it up a little bit up more on the side that is facing the wind. Again, that helps keep the fire contained to the pit. Now that we have completed putting our fire ring together, we are ready to move onto our next step."