[This review was collected as part of a promotion.] We have been wanting to get a fire pit for our patio, but have been hesitant because there are so many and we just didn’t know which one to get. So I was super excited to receive the Coleman 25 Cityscapes Smokeless Fire Pit to try out.
SPECS AND PACKAGING:
This fire put is quite large. It is 25.5” across and 18” tall. It is not light either, weighing in at 38 pounds. It is heavy duty. It would take a little muscle to take it places, but if you were taking it camping or with you in an RV, that is completely doable. The fire pit was very well packaged and had enough styrofoam to keep it from being dented in transport, but not overly so that you had to remove 15lbs before getting to the product.
SET UP:
It was super easy to set up and took less than 10 minutes to put together. We had an issue with one of the legs. One screw did not want to thread in all the way. It continuously stopped about halfway in. Tried a couple different screws and they were all the same. It was a little frustrating that a product in this price range would have a defect such as this. It has not affected the use.
The pictures on the instructions are super helpful. There was no mistaking where the parts that were included went. Ash Pan goes in first, then the Ash Grate, and finally the fire ring on top.
I am not sure I would use this in the grass without some form of rock underneath it. It does get hot. We felt it safest to use it on our patio so that is where we put it.
USE:
At first we tried to use wood pellets. We were hoping we could get a cleaner burn and the pellets would last longer than using wood. There was no clear instructions on if we should remove the Ash Pan and Grate when burning pellets so it was a little trial and error (again, newbies here). We found that whatever we were doing didn’t work very well. Lighting and keeping the pellets burning was so frustrating. We ended up cutting our loses and just cleaned it out. We may try it again when we can get a clear idea on if we need to do anything different.
We defaulted to wood and that worked great. The Ash Grate worked perfect to allow air flow underneath the wood. No worrying about the pile of wood collapsing and extinguishing the fire or throwing ash and embers everywhere.
While there was a lot less smoke than burning wood in an open fire pit, there was still some smoke. Having the fire ring on top did focus the smoke upwards so that made for a better experience.
It was easy to clean out too. The Ash Pan collected a majority of the ash so a quick wipe around the bottom of the pit and we reassembled it in no time.
OVERALL:
We plan to get a lot of use out of this. We have already roasted marshmallows over it and it worked so well. With fall approaching and the evenings turning cooler, we will be out on our patio a lot more because of this fire pit. We did but a cover for it and we do plan to store it in our shed during the weather months to help it last longer.
The biggest thing we wished it had was a flat lid for it so the cover we bought for it would not get bogged down in the middle when it rains. Not something that should be a deal breaker for purchasing this item.
We would recommend this fire pit to our friends and family. It is well made and should last a long time.
