<p>Okay all of you Southern Californians and others living in indoor-outdoor climates…</p>
<p>Now that we are spending some time in this region, we need some sort of patio heating setup to make our outdoors more usable on uber-cool evenings.</p>
<p>I don’t even know what questions to ask, other than I want it to look good, heat at least more than the person standing right up at it, be durable and easy to use.</p>
<p>How much space do you have? Either is a good choice made better by the actual space where it will be set. A fire pit is great but not if takes up 50% of the deckspace. A pole heater is nice but not if only heats 10% of the space… </p>
<p>Thanks, Opie. It’s an irregular shape which extends/wraps the rear of the house. Overall, probably about 35’ x 12’. It sort of divides into two main sitting areas of about 12’ x 12’ with a narrower 12’x 7’ area joining the two where people might mill about but we don’t have any seating furniture there.</p>
<p>I don’t know if it would make sense, but a fire pit (or heater) could probably go in that “joining space” (it is all one stone patio, but shaped that way). It would not block traffic, I don’t think, but I don’t know if it would “shoot” heat enough in each direction.</p>
<p>We might need to treat the two seating areas separately?</p>
<p>The little cocktail lounge in our neighborhood has gas pole heaters in the patio area, they heat rather well and would be good in the seated area I think but firepits especially if it is designed so you can use it for cooking too always draw people.</p>
<p>Are people going to be walking around or doing something? Then just give them chemical handwarmers ;)</p>
<p>But, bethie, you live in Vermont! LOL. I would never use one in my “small New England town.” In the southwest, they are everywhere - outdoor restaurants keep on keeping on all year with the help of these gizmos, people host Christmas parties outdoors with them etc.</p>
<p>We have a fire pit that like Bethievt have used twice in 2 yrs. It isn’t gas so you have to go to the trouble of having wood available and feeling that you have the time to make it worth while. One thing about wood fire pits is you end up smelling like a campfire. I hate that smell in my hair and always feel like I need to wash my hair to be able to fall asleep. Our fire pit is pretty to look at. It is iron that has cut outs on the side. Quite rustic looking. I have a friend who has a gas outdoor fire pit by their pool and they use it often. You usually sit fairly close to it.</p>
<p>I have eaten at many places with outside seating with the pole type heaters. They throw off lots of heat and are fairly easy to turn on and off. You would need more then one. One think you have to look at is height clearance if you have a covered patio. They have them at Costco seasonally.
I have also been at places that have rectangle heaters mounted on the ceiling of the patio. These are great for outdoor dining. They look expensive and probably would need professional installation. But they are nice that they don’t take up patio space and you don’t see them.</p>
<p>maybe one of both. a firepit is usually going to have about a 3x3 or 4x4 footprint. A pole heater about a 2x2. you might want to make a quick template or take a couple yard sticks and lay them down on the deck. Lay out your chairs and how you would set them up for company. Is there room to easily move around? or would a large footprint item make a 12x12 crowded? A firepit would be a bit difficult for the 12x7 space as the firepit footprint coupled with chairs makes it kinda tight.</p>
<p>A ciminea (sp) might work Ok as they usually have a smaller footprint. As someone else mentioned smoke is something to consider depending on your layout. A firepit won’t get used much if the smoke blows back into the house.
I’d go one pole heater and look for a smaller propane firepit. If only money for one, go with the pole heater and move it back and forth…</p>
<p>I almost bought a IR lamp for the deck at the coast but I was more interested in a new toilet. </p>
<p>We have a 4 ft diameter steel open fire place on the deck, I am afraid of using it because the deck is a cedar deck with oil based stain that is 40 years old. A spark on this deck in the summer could destroy a very valuable house.</p>
<p>My h and I have very recently built a surround for what we consider to be the ideal solution for us. We wanted the look and feel of an outdoor fire pit, but the most logical place for us to really use it would be on our raised wooden deck. That pretty much ruled out wood burning for us (due to spark hazard), and we also eliminated some of the gas-fueled units out there that put out BTU’s in the 50-60,000 range (scary next to our house!). We did a lot of resarch and came up with a little unit called the Firedancer. </p>
<p>It’s a very simple little device designed originally as a portable propane-fuled unit for camping. It can also be purchased with attachments for natural gas (which is what we did). It puts out a reasonable amount of heat, but not too much, and is just right to sit around on cool nights.</p>
<p>We did not want a huge table, so H built a unit to house it (12-sided base and a round tiled top), and I tiled it with tiles we had left over from our kitchen re-do (slate tiles…really pretty!). It looks very nice and is just right for us. They actually sell a table to go with it, but reviews indicate that it is very poorly made and unstable. We built ours from pretty much left over materials, so we were pretty tickled with that!</p>
<p>If you google “firedancer” you will find the canadian website for this company. I highly recommend it for small intimate seating areas. You could even have two different ones and build a surround for them if you are pretty handy. They cost just over $100 each.</p>
<p>Just an FYI, we looked and looked for already built fire-pit tables. Most were too big for our space and cost $1-2,000.</p>
<p>We have two outdoor gas starter fireplaces which make lighting very simple. When we put in a pergola (with a plexiglass roof over the structure), we also had a gas line run so we could put in an overhead gas heater. That runs with an on/off switch and also is very simple to use, but a bit more costly to install because of the gas line. We also have a couple pole heaters we can move around, which work very well. My stepfather got them for us at the military store, but Costco also carries them. They were about $200. each. Finally, we had curtains made of sunbrella with velcro closures to hang from the pergola, since we live near the coast in San Diego and it can be very breezy at times. We LOVE sitting outside in the cool evenings. For those of you who don’t know, coastal California has very cool evenings most of the time.</p>
<p>The outdoor horse arena where I train with my dogs–year round, come cold, heat, etc.–has one of the outdoor pole heaters from Costco. The owner only turns it on when it goes below freezing (so today’s 33 degrees didn’t quite make it) but it definitely takes the chill off–for a radius of about five feet.</p>
<p>We use a cast iron chiminea which is open through most of the middle section with a grate so the heat radiates out all around. It was less than $100 from Lowes (in NJ). We have plenty of wood being in the woods, and it sits kind of high so I don’t remember smoke being much of an issue for us like it is for our neighbor with a fire pit. But we only use it to heat a roughly 14 x 15 foot space and it sits at the outside corner so the opposite corner doesn’t get warm enough.</p>
<p>The pole heaters run off either natural gas or propane. (Most, such as the ones you buy at Costco, run off propane.) They can make things very warm, and they don’t throw sparks, so they are good for people either standing or sitting under them. They even have table top versions, but then I’m thinking your feet would get cold…The fire pits are pretty, and you can roast marshmellows over them, but they throw off sparks, so aren’t the best choice around wood decks. They also throw off less heat, so they are mostly good for warming seating areas. But again, people don’t congregate around a pole like they do around a fire pit. They do require wood, not gas. And you need to know how to build a fire, versus turn on a switch.</p>
<p>We have a woodfired oven, that after you get it up to 700F (which you need to cook pizzas) you can keep quite an area toasty.</p>
<p>Simply take a rage and if using future squirt some on the outside of the chiminea. </p>
<p>Hmmm.</p>
<p>What part wasn’t clear? LOL…</p>
<p>I think that rage is rag, but for the life of me I don’t have “future” translated. uhhhhhh… I got nothing. Edit: It appears to be a brand of floor wax. Who knew?;)</p>
<p>One more thing to consider: if you live in an area where burn bans are commonplace during long periods of atmospheric stagnation, you might not be able to use your wood firepit. Propane heater would still be allowed.</p>