Portable Fire Pit

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lucyford22
lucyford22 Posts: 198 Member
My boyfriend and I recently moved to house with a great backyard. We bought one of those portable fire pits and have enjoyed a couple fires. Tonight we made a fire and we were enjoying ourselves for about twenty minutes when suddenly our neighbors smoke detector started alarming! We were so embarrassed! We IMMEDIATELY extinguished the fire and apologized profusely to our neighbor. We only had one log burning so it wasn't too big...I guess with the wind it was just going into his house. His back sliding door was open...obviously we don't want to bother our neighbor so it got me thinking. Is there a non gas alternative to burning wood? (I say non gas as I'd like to salvage our pit somehow if we can) If the smoke is a problem, which, if it set off a neighbors detector it is, we will not continue burning the traditional wood logs but we do enjoy the fire. Just wondering if anyone else has encountered anything like this and if they have come up with a clever solution?

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  • snowflake930
    snowflake930 Posts: 2,188 Member
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    We have a portable one in the front of our house on the patio. It is probably about 20 feet (at the most) from the front door. We have never had an issue with the smoke detectors being set off by the smoke from it. Maybe just watch the direction the wind is coming from and if it would be drifting towards your neighbors door move it to another spot up wind from it if possible. They are great on a crisp, cool fall evening.

    We heat with wood, and occasionally have forgotten to open the flue. Once all 3 smoke detectors went off.
  • BigT555
    BigT555 Posts: 2,068 Member
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    Im still trying to wrap my head around how a fire in your backyard set off your neighbours smoke detector. unless the wind was blowing the smoke directly into the patio door it must be super sensitive or something
  • lucyford22
    lucyford22 Posts: 198 Member
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    ....so believe it or not, he set his own smoke detector off! There is a slight language barrier between us so when we apologized the night of he didn't understand us. Last night we tried apologizing again and he said, "Oh no, I left the kitchen and forgot to turn a burner off that had a pan on it."
    So I guess, problem solved!