Outdoor Fireplace Kits

If installing an outdoor fireplace is on your agenda, but you're not looking to break the bank on a big-budget, custom-designed fireplace, you may want to explore the many available options for outdoor fireplace kits. Currently available in just about every design style, and ranging from traditional wood-burning to gas and propane fired, outdoor fireplace kits offer the warmth and cozy elegance of an outdoor fireplace, often at a fraction of the cost of a custom-built fireplace.

Whereas an installed and custom-built fireplace will require you to hire a stone-mason (unless you've got serious stone-carving skills yourself) and likely cost you a pretty penny, outdoor fireplace kits are available from a wide array of local and national hardware retailers, both online and in-store. In general, full kits will cost anywhere from $500 to $2,500, in the low to mid-range pricing tiers. Higher-end kits are available with various amenities, including cooking features like pizza ovens, lighting and higher-quality stone.

For the most part, outdoor fireplace kits resemble an indoor fireplace—they generally feature a base, fireplace, and chimney—but whereas the chimney rises all the way through the roof in a home, outdoor fireplaces usually feature shorter chimneys that simply open a few or several feet above the fireplace.

When it comes to choosing materials for your outdoor fireplace kit, you'll have several options, with one common limitation: in general, outdoor fireplace kits feature a stone "finish" over their base. This simply means that a thin veneer of stone has been attached to the face of the fireplace, as opposed to the entire fixture being carved from stone or created wholesale from brick, for example. While this can work for in-home fireplaces or even fixed-location outdoor ones, fireplace kits by their nature need to be portable, and therefore this design ensures that they won't be too heavy to transport from the retailer to your home, and then, if you so desire, to multiple locations within your backyard or outdoor living space. The finish you choose for your outdoor fireplace kit can match your overall outdoor space design, or you can choose a more daring design—but you'll have plenty of options, from all types of stone to many ceramics, brick and even metals.

In terms of functionality, outdoor fireplace kits generally fall into three categories: wood-burning, gas or propane-fired. For a wood-burning fireplace, you'll need nothing more than a safe place (clear of any tree branches or bushes) to put it and a steady supply of firewood. For a gas fireplace, you'll need to hook the fixture up to a gas line—this is fairly simple to do. Lastly, a propane outdoor fireplace kit will need to be connected to a gas line that runs to a propane tank—which you'll need to regularly supply with propane.