How I built my BBQ pit

Here you will find the story of how I built my BBQ pit in my back yard as well as some pictures to help you. Let me start off by explaining a few things. First of all, you can tell by looking at the craftsmanship (or lack thereof) that I am FAR from a brick layer. This BBQ pit was my first attempt at doing anything with bricks and mortar. Masonry work is not a skill for the faint of heart, and I now know why it costs so much to have someone do masonry work for you.

Secondly, as you browse this page and try to build your own BBQ pit, you may occasionally ask yourself, "Why did he do that?", or "Why did he do it that way?". Any of these types of questions can be answered by one of the following:

"It was less expensive to do it this way"

OR

"I didn't know how to do it the right way so I improvised"

At the time that I built this pit I was on a budget and cut a few corners. For example, instead of laying the bricks for the main cooking chamber flat, I stood them on their sides so that it would take fewer bricks to get the job done. This makes the walls of the pit thinner because the part of the brick with the most surface area is facing out instead of facing the other bricks. The picture below is of the main cooking chamber before I built the chimney and firebox on the ends. Hopefully you can see what I mean about laying the bricks on their sides rather than flat.

click the picture for a bigger view

If you are new to BBQ and are not familiar with the basic components of a BBQ pit, click here for a diagram. Otherwise, continue on below if you already know the basic parts and operation of a pit.

The Foundation & Main Cooking Chamber

I started by building a concrete form and pouring a concrete base 28"x36"x9". In hindsight, it probably would have been just as easy to lay down concrete cinder blocks, fill the spaces in the blocks with dirt, and then build the pit from there.

I then built the main cooking chamber on top of the cement base. Cooking chamber dimensions are 36" long, 24" wide and 22" high. On the firebox end I left an opening near the bottom of the cooking chamber approximately 8" square. This is where the heat and smoke will eventually enter the cooking chamber. On the opposite end near the top of the cooking chamber, I left an opening approximately 6" square for a chimmey outlet. At a level just above the top of the firebox opening and just below the chimney opening I offset a couple of bricks to the inside of the cooking chamber on both the front and back sides of the chamber.(click here for a reference picture) This is to create a ledge for the cooking grate to rest on inside the cooking chamber. (click here) Be sure to place your grate so that as the heat and smoke move from the firebox opening to the chimney opening they are drawn directly across the cooking grate in a sort of upward diagonal direction. This will ensure that your meat gets the most of the heat and smoke.

Finally, I layed a row of bricks with the flat side down (the way ALL of the bricks technically should have been layed) to create a good flat surface for the lid to seal on. (see picture)

As you might be able to tell from some of the pictures I originally had a great idea for a drain in the bottom of my pit so that I could clean the drippings and grease out easily. I tried creating a slight slope to the back left-hand corner of the bottom of the pit and putting a piece of PVC pipe in as a drain pipe. My original plan was to put a male hose end on the end of the PVC pipe so that I could hook a garden hose up to it and run the hose out into the field behind my house. None of this actually turned out as well as I had hoped and I eventually ended up cutting the PVC pipe off so that it was not sticking out and causing a tripping hazzard. You may be able to incorporate your own idea for a drain that will work better than mine. For one thing, I think I used a PVC pipe that was too small in diameter, as it tends to clog up quite easily and I ended up having to run a coathanger through it every 15 seconds or so while it was draining to loosen up the gunk that was coming out. I also did not get a good slope to the drain hole and that caused some issues as well. All in all, this is something I would have been better off not wasting my time and energy on but as I said, you may be able to come up with your own idea that will work.

The Chimney

The chimney on my BBQ pit is one of those things that you will probably look at and ask yourself, "What WAS he thinking?". At the time this seemed like the most logical and inexpensive way to do it, so that's about the best explanation I can come up with. In order to cut down on laying so many bricks for a foundation for the chimney, I chose to take 3 rectangular paving bricks 2"x8"x15" and stand 2 on end and then place the third one horizontal on top of the other two (see the red circle in the picture below) to form a base to build the chimney on. An idea that I had after finishing my pit was to incorporate this idea on a bigger scale and perhaps make an area under this chimney base to store a few chunks of firewood. My setup now is much too small to do this, but if I had planned ahead it would have made a nice addition to the pit. In the picture below, the blue square indicates approximately where the chimney opening is from the cooking chamber. The red horizontal line on the chimney indicates where the chimney damper is. You can purchase a damper unit from a fireplace or woodstove store. I mortared mine right into the chimney. You should be able to find one with a square flange to fit the chimney, but the actual damper itself will probably be round. Again, a store that sells woodstoves and accessories should be able to give you some advice if you are not familiar with this type of equipment.

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