Having a firepit within your backyard can be as great a home accessory as a swimming pool or hot tub. It creates a location where your friends can congregate to tell stories at night time and share laughs. It also allows you to set up space where you and your family can huddle up on a cold night and enjoy a few toasty smores. For all these reasons and more, fire pits are great; there is absolutely no doubt about that. However, they can also be quite dangerous as well.

Fire is a natural hazard. Be that as it may, this has the potential to be so much worse if the source of the flames is located just outside your house. As such, if you’d like to avoid one day coming home and discovering that your property has been burnt to the ground because of a wayward or poorly maintained firepit, it’s important to regularly enforce certain safety precautions.

In this blog, we are going to take a deep dive into the subject of how to use a fire pit safely. We’ll walk you through a few key fire pit precautions, as well as provide you with some tips that will help you keep both yourself and your family safe.

1. Buy a Fire Extinguisher

One of the very first precautionary measures that you’ll need to take when you install a brand new fire pit into your backyard is to purchase a fire extinguisher. This extinguisher should then be kept within close proximity of your firepit at all times. In addition to this, you should make sure that your extinguisher is regularly serviced and filled up as you continue to use your firepit, even if it hasn’t been used before. Because there is nothing worse than discovering that the extinguisher you bought years ago and never used any longer works in a time of crisis.

2. Build Your Fire Correctly

The next safety precaution that you should adhere to when operating your firepit is to build it small, then gradually add more fuel. When a fire starts, it typically grows until it’s consumed all the combustible material within contact. As such, if you start by building a very large fire, you likely won’t be able to control how big it becomes which is very dangerous. For this reason, always prioritise starting small and growing bigger.

In addition to this, you should make sure that you only use recommended fire starters. Throwing gasoline or oil into a firepit instead can be a sure recipe for disaster.
Here at Maine and Crawford, we’d love to help you find the perfect firepit for your home.

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