Giving up on Firewood… Maybe :)

Since buying a pellet fire pit and seeing how well it works, it got me thinking about the ease of wood pellets, at least for me.  I heat alternatively with a pellet stove in my house so I typically have a pallet sized stack on hand.  The bags weight 40 lbs each.  A bag provides a day and a half worth of heat.  I buy a ton and a half each summer. A ton of pellets is 50 bags stacked on a pallet and runs me about $220 or $4.40 per bag.  Living in the Northwest, there is no shortage of firewood, but I just don’t have easy access to it.  To get wood, I put feelers out with friends and coworkers and sometimes find somebody with a dead or fallen tree, or search it out on craigslist. We can purchase a permit to cut for a small fee that allows us to take 3-cords but often you are limited to areas many miles or hours away and it just doesn’t make sense to me. Then there’s the cutting, chopping, hauling and storing it in this wet climate. Sounding lazy? Well yes! I am a bit these days I guess.

The second part of my issue is that my wife and grandson both have asthma and just can’t handle the smoke of damp wood fire.   I currently have a propane fire ring.  It looks nice and with the addition of some lava rocks, it does put off some heat.  Problem is that it will burn a 20#er of propane pretty quick and it’s quite a drive from our lake place to get them filled.  Secondly, I tried Presto type logs.  They have a weird smell, are a bit expensive, and don’t put off a lot of heat. So when I found a pellet burning fire pit, I was curious and ordered it right away.  I purchased a Flame Genie Inferno 19 off of Amazon.

I love this thing!  It puts off a bunch of heat.  You need to add pellets pretty frequently.  A small feed scoop works great for this.  Dimensions are 12 X 19.  This model runs about $100 and they have an optional carry bag for $15 that makes it more portable.

So now what? can I live without a wood fire? 

Well… not yet. A friend of mine brought a Discada to camp one weekend and we cooked EVERYTHING in that.  We pulled coals from the fire and used concrete blocks that we found laying around to “fashion” up this “stand”.  Adolfo has become our camp cook.  He loves to cook and we love to eat so it’s a match made in heaven.  We had fun razzing him about his “Mexican Wok” but I was impressed by the versatility, easy cleanup, fire for fuel, and of course, his food.

This was a whole pork shoulder that he boiled down and turned into some pretty tasty burritos.

So…. back to burning wood…. 

Until I saw this YouTube post from BlueDogGarage:

Look!!  A Discada!!  And there are other videos of guys burning pellets in them.  I gotta build one.  Stay tuned.  I had an idea to add a hitch somehow so I could haul it on my front or rear receiver of the truck.  Make it a bit more overlandable and not have it tearing up the bed of the truck or inside of the popup camper.

What do you think?