Sunday lite : Dakota Fire Pit.

I uploaded this video the other day, minus any comments.

No this is not the 'fire of hell'.  This is called a Dakota Fire Pit or fire hole.

For those of you who are campers, outdoors folks etc this is an efficient and simple method to make a safe fire, generate a lot of heat for cooking with minimal fire wood and it is extremely easy to clean up, leaving absolutely no trace.

The two holes you see in the video are connected by a tunnel at the bottom. (I excavated this in our back yard - just for fun.) The smaller hole is obviously the air hole (about eight inches wide, can be square, round, triangular etc - no fatwa yet). 

The other hole is the burning chamber or fire hole, slightly larger. Both holes are about 18 inches deep and they are about one foot apart.

When the twigs / wood begins to burn in the fire hole, hot air rises up, pulling fresh air through that tunnel connnected to the air hole. There is a suction effect (a venturi effect) and you can actually hear the air rushing in the video above.  Also the fire burns hotter if there is a breeze blowing. The stronger the breeze the faster the burn, sometimes like a blowtorch.

As the name suggests this Dakota Fire Pit was used by the Dakota Indians (native Americans) in the windy prairies of the Dakotas. Since the fire is below the ground surface, it could not be blown out by the strong prairie winds. The heat still comes straight up and you can cook even in the strongest winds. And there was less risk of sparks being blown by the wind to start bush fires. 

Since the fire is contained inside the fire hole, surrounded by earth which is a poor conductor of heat, the temperature in the fire hole gets very hot. You can cook a meal using very little firewood.   The firewood is fully consumed and the fire generates very little smoke. Modern day "armageddon preppies" call this the 'stealth fire'.     

Once you are done, just refill the hole with the soil you excavated. If you put back the grass or vegetation there will be no trace that you even made a fire.

Happy weekend.