Fire pit glass advice

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Nursenini

Nursenini

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Sep 22, 2015
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Bixby, Ok
I'm working on transitioning to fire glass from the lava rock that came with out fire pit build. The lava rock has a coating on it that makes it shiny as well as pop out of the fire pit after it has been heated. Needless to say, this is a bad situation.
I took Kim's suggestion about checking Lowes. They do indeed have glass, and I purchased 2 buckets (25lbs each) and need 2 more to fill the fire pit opening. I haven't opened the buckets yet. I was browsing online to see if Lowes has 1/2" glass to order instead of the 1/4" I have, and stumbled across a review that said their glass melted!! So, I'm going to return this and not take a chance. It's not cheap and I don't want to have to replace our gas pipe.

Any advice on a good quality glass that won't be outrageously expensive?

When I remove the lava rock, do I need to put in a screen or some other fill material before the glass? Advice from others who have replaced their lava rock would be appreciated.

Blessings!
Denise
 
Denise,

We filled the bottom of our pit with lava rocks and then the upper 4 inches with colored glass from American Specialty Glass - Landscape Glass | Terrazzo Glass | Fireplace Glass - ASG

I purchased 75 lbs of large medium glass chunk color "River Mix". They have both glass chunks and glass beads. Most of their glass is recycled which is nice. With shipping costs I believe we spent about $280 total. It's expensive but BEAUTIFUL.
 
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JoyfulNoise said:
Denise,

We filled the bottom of our pit with lava rocks and then the upper 4 inches with colored glass from American Specialty Glass - Landscape Glass | Terrazzo Glass | Fireplace Glass - ASG

I purchased 75 lbs of large glass chunk color "River Mix". They have both glass chunks and glass beads. Most of their glass is recycled which is nice. With shipping costs I believe we spent about $300 total. It's expensive but BEAUTIFUL.
Click to expand...


I'll check them out, Matt, thank you! Do you think I should buy non coated lava rock to put down for a base since mine is coated and pops when hot? Or is there something else I can use? Do you know if pea gravel fire rated?
 
I have not seen "coated" lava rock before. If it's popping, get rid of it. Use fire pit grade lava rock.

I'm not sure if pea gravel is safe. If any stone has trapped water in it, it can pop or explode on heating. Lava rock works well because it is very porous and typically doesn't trap any water. I have never had any problems with my fire pit using the lava rock.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
 
I really like the River mix! Do you have any pictures of your filled pit? I think I'll call and get some samples sent to me. The price seems reasonable but shipping is a bit of an "ouch" at about $100!
 
Ill have to add a picture in the morning, I can't find one right now. It's a nice color mix. ASG has lots of great colors. We plan to rebuild our living room fireplace one of these days and, since it's gas, I want to use ASG to fill it.

Yeah, the shipping hurts BUT if you use their recommended amount, you'll probably need about 50lbs or more of glass (they have an online calculator). Shipping that kind of weight is expensive unfortunately.


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JoyfulNoise said:
Ill have to add a picture in the morning, I can't find one right now. It's a nice color mix. ASG has lots of great colors. We plan to rebuild our living room fireplace one of these days and, since it's gas, I want to use ASG to fill it.

Yeah, the shipping hurts BUT if you use their recommended amount, you'll probably need about 50lbs or more of glass (they have an online calculator). Shipping that kind of weight is expensive unfortunately.


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Click to expand...

Awesome! I'm looking forward to seeing it!
According to their calculator, I need 168lbs of glass. My total is about $500 including shipping...
 
That's a big firepit...are you calculating filling the whole thing with glass or just a few inches? Honestly the bulk of pit can be lava stone and top 3" or so can be glass.


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we used Golden Flame fire glass (search amazon among others) and ordered right at 100 lbs to fill our fire pit (around 36" internal if I recall) with about 2-4" of glass. I need to take some pics of the completed pool and pit and will post shortly.
 

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Sorry, the morning light is not quite right but here's what the river mix looks like in my fire pit (sorry for the rotated images, I've stopped using PhotoBucket) -

IMG_4420.jpg
IMG_4422.jpg
 
darin.brown said:
we used Golden Flame fire glass (search amazon among others) and ordered right at 100 lbs to fill our fire pit (around 36" internal if I recall) with about 2-4" of glass. I need to take some pics of the completed pool and pit and will post shortly.
Click to expand...

I'd love to see it, Darin!

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JoyfulNoise said:
Sorry, the morning light is not quite right but here's what the river mix looks like in my fire pit (sorry for the rotated images, I've stopped using PhotoBucket) -

View attachment 57084
View attachment 57085
Click to expand...

ooooo Matt! That is so pretty! I really like the size of the pieces, too. I'm going to call for my samples!

so, if photobucket the reason images are rotating now? I never had that problem last year. Now they all post sideways...
 
Denise,

One thing I will say about the River Mix is that it's not that great looking at night. There's lots of dark blues in it and, if your patio or fire pit area has low lighting, you'll pretty much just see the flame from the fire pit and not much glass. I'm ok with that but some people want their fire pits to really sparkle and glimmer at night. If that is the case, then you'll probably want to go with a lighter mix or use a clear glass bead to get lots of sparkle.

- - - Updated - - -

Nursenini said:
ooooo Matt! That is so pretty! I really like the size of the pieces, too. I'm going to call for my samples!

so, if photobucket the reason images are rotating now? I never had that problem last year. Now they all post sideways...
Click to expand...

Definitely order the samples. I got three boxes of samples from them so my wife and I could look at all the colors. Now the kids use the glass beads and sample glass for school projects.

As for Photobucket, no it's not rotating images. Those images were attached using TFP's native image attachment function (which is not very good at figuring out which way a picture should be rotated). I stopped using PB temporarily because I think my account got hacked and all....ALL.... of my images are gone. So now, in TFP, wherever I used PB image links, there's nothing there but broken link error images. I currently have a help ticket in on the PB website but they are not being very responsive to the problem. So, I've decided not to use PB anymore until I get some indication from them as to what happened. It's kind of annoying because if the account was hacked and the images are gone, I have lots of posts on TFP that are going to be screwed up...
 
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