How to Heat a Gazebo in Winter

Find out why you shouldn't build a fire pit in your gazebo, because there's nowhere for the smoke to go and the roof will burn down. Learn why we don't really heat gazebos in winter months because they aren't meant to be enclosed.

LESLIE: Michael in Kentucky is on the line and he’s got a question about a gazebo [1]. What can we do for you today?

MICHAEL: Oh, well, I wanted to try and find a way to use my gazebo during the winter. It gets kind of cold here in Kentucky and the gazebo is made out of wood. And I’m looking to put a fire-pit kind of thing but I don’t want to use the wood, because it’s made out of wood; I don’t want it to go up in flames.

TOM: Mm-hmm. OK. That’s wise. But your gazebo probably has a roof on it, right?

MICHAEL: Yeah, it has a roof.

TOM: Yeah, so you can’t really put a fire under it. You just – because unless it’s a tepee with a big hole in the top, there’s no place for the smoke to go. You’re going to collect a lot of heat up there and it’s really generally a bad idea.

So really, the question is how can you heat your gazebo in the winter months. And there’s a good reason we don’t heat gazebos in winter months, because they’re not really designed to be enclosed [2].

MICHAEL: So, I guess it’s kind of an out-of-the-question kind of thing then.

TOM: It would seem. Typically, if you want to put some sort of a heating system onto your deck, then you could use a fire pit. And you could design it or even have a – like we have a fire – a portable sort of fire – pit that we wheel out onto the patio and put a couple of logs in there. But when you’re in a gazebo like that, you can’t create a fire because you’re going to burn the roof down.

So it’s a hard space to use. If you had an open patio area or maybe an open area of your yard, Michael, that would be a smarter place to create a gathering place where you could actually really build a true fire pit.

There’s a great article online on our website on how to build a fire pit. There’s also a radio show that we did with Roger Cook from This Old House where he gave us his tips on how to build a fire pit [3].

MICHAEL: OK. So, basically, it’d probably be a better thing to put maybe outside of my gazebo.

TOM: Yeah, exactly. Gazebos are just not intended to be enclosed.

MICHAEL: Well, that sounds like it answers my question pretty well.

TOM: Alright, Michael. Good luck with that project. Thanks so much for calling us at 888-MONEY-PIT.