Ember · fire pits, posted from Australia
An 80cm weathered steel bowl, deep enough to burn for hours. $299, out of an Australian warehouse, in the backyard this week.
Free delivery Australia-wide · 30-day returns · Ships same working day
Fit
Everything else on a fire pit spec sheet is noise. Size decides whether people can actually feel the heat from where they are sitting, and it is the one thing you cannot change later.
Four people sit about a metre and a half apart around a fire, and a 56cm bowl throws enough heat to close that circle without cooking the person downwind. It is also the size that still lifts with two hands when you want it somewhere else.
Build
A painted fire pit looks best on the day it arrives and worse every time you light it, because no coating survives that heat. This one is left bare on purpose: it weathers to a dark rust-brown, holds there, and stops looking new in the way an old pan stops looking new.
Before you burn
This is the part of the category worth understanding before you spend anything.
After the first burn
There is no filter, no gas bottle, no consumable and no subscription — we looked for one and would rather tell you it does not exist than sell you a box of something. A fire pit is the rare object that is worth more to you in year five than year one, because by then it has a colour you did not choose and cannot buy.
Price
Same pit, same bowl. The difference is whether you are still moving logs with a stick in six weeks.
Fire pit + tool set
The 80cm bowl and the five-piece set — poker, tongs, shovel, brush and stand — in one order. Everything you need on the first night and nothing you do not.
Just the bowl. Perfectly reasonable — most people manage the first season with a stick and a pair of oven gloves.
The range
The 80cm is the one we would put in your yard. The rest exist because a courtyard is not a paddock, and because some fires happen a long way from the house.
The 80cm Iron Bowl
The full-size bowl. Deep enough to hold a proper bed of coals, wide enough to close a circle of six.
The 56cm Iron Bowl
The same rustic bowl at courtyard scale. Still lifts with two hands, still throws enough heat for four.
The Deep Bowl
Portable, with the deepest bowl in the range. Fewer sparks and a longer burn from the same armful of wood.
The Packable Pit
Folds flat into its own carry bag. The one that lives in the boot and comes out at the campsite.
Fire tool set, five pieces
Poker, tongs, shovel, brush and a stand to hang them on. The difference between moving a log and knocking the whole fire over.
Firewood, heat beads, starters
We do not sell these and we are not going to. Any servo, hardware store or roadside honesty box will beat what it costs us to post a heavy box of fuel across the country.
Questions
No. On a declared total fire ban a solid-fuel fire in the open is not permitted anywhere in Australia, and a fire pit is a solid-fuel fire in the open. Bans are declared the morning of, by your state fire authority, and they are worth checking in summer before you plan an evening around it. Nothing about this product creates an exemption, and anyone telling you otherwise is selling something.
Usually not, but it genuinely depends on where you live. Some councils set a minimum distance from boundaries and structures, some restrict burning to certain hours, and a small number require a permit for any outdoor fire. One search of your council's name plus "fire pit" settles it, and it is the step people skip and then regret.
Yes, and that is the finish rather than a defect. Bare steel weathers to a dark rust-brown over the first few months and then largely holds there. The alternative is paint, which cannot survive fire temperatures and starts flaking somewhere in the first season. If you want to slow it down, keep it off wet ground and tip the water out after rain.
Dry, untreated hardwood or standard charcoal. Not treated pine, not painted or laminated timber, not pallets of unknown origin — those release genuinely unpleasant things at fire pit temperatures, and your neighbours will smell it before you do. Never use petrol or accelerants to start it.
On the packable pit, yes — it is built as a grill as well. On the bowls, you can cook over coals with your own grate, but they are sold as fire pits rather than barbecues and we would rather describe them that way than oversell it.
It ships from an Australian warehouse, usually the same working day if you order before early afternoon. Two days to most metro addresses, longer regionally. Nothing comes from overseas, so there is no three-week wait and no customs.
Start
Order today and it is in the yard before Friday. Bring your own wood — that part is genuinely cheaper down the road.
Get a fire pit — $299