Dealing with the wind

Frosty said:

 
Gary, That is plenty nice, and you did a great job.  Personally I use tarps, and plywood, so I feel a little embarrassed at the modesty of mine.

Congratulations.

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Thank you Frosty,

I really had no choice on the design. You can't see them but there are wire trellises with grape vines directly behind the stone wall as well as a Canistel fruit tree directly in the corner only 3 feet away and I wanted to protect those. So stone was my only choice.

I started out with footpath stones and they were too porous with the wind. Concrete blocks I had lying about that I tried were OK but the square / rectangular shape would have left too much space around the chiminea for air to get in.

The stones I wound up with are factory cut in a house lot cul-de-sac shape that lent themselves to a natural arc. Once the first couple of courses were done it was clear that it would serve the purpose, strain my back and bank account all at the same time! It took well over a month of many trips in my Mustang to HD to finish.

They are held together by gravity alone, I elected to not use bonding of any sort because if I ever move all of those stones are somehow coming with me :-)

SmokinAl said:

 
There's plenty of guys that make wind breaks for their smokers, but yours is really cool, Gary!!

Nice job, Bud!!

Al

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Thanks Al,

I imagine in CF you don't get much wind? I only lived there a few months but I do remember the BBQ smoke always going straight up.