Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

UPDATED: 3 years later and I must say, this thing keeps chugging along and everyone who enjoys a fire with us asks "Where do I get one of these?". Everything below still holds true except my thoughts on a few things have changed/improved. (See #'s 3, 4 and 5) - Updating to 5 stars based on how many awesome times we've had with this Firepit by our side. We've taken this on 8+ camping trips and it'd held up great. ------------------------------ We've had ours for about 6 months now and have used it every other week or so on the patio and a few times at the beach/camping. There's little to no smoke once you have good combustion (look it up, not joking, understanding this will help you realize that most complaints are due to variables and not the device itself). We've had about 6 friends buy their own once they hung out with our firepit. So maybe we're doing something right. (See below) 1. Fueling the fire: Use well-dried wood (not heavy wet/dense wood). We use birch wood. Pine would work, but not oak etc. The cords at HD are small and easy to manage. This makes the most substantial difference in our fire experience. 2. Building the fire: Be a good boy/girl scout and start your fire small and build it incrementally. This reduces smoke and gets to peak combustion faster. 3. Managing the fire: Adjust the fan as you add new logs and logs burn down... duh (see combustion). Try to keep the logs a few inches from the metal plate that's on the fan. The smaller birch wood cords make this very easy. We use a 24 in metal fire stick to turn and move the logs during our burns. UPDATED: We grabbed the Biolite fire stick to help move the wood around so it burns more completely, this tool was a nice enhancement to the experience. One could do this with a metal stick or fireplace poker if you have one already, but we didn't. The Biolite one is really well designed and not huge so it stores nicely with our Firepit. 4. Build quality: we've had no problems with the fan or battery but were in the early deliveries so perhaps something has changed. So far so good. We did experience rust as we are in a marine environment, so everything metal rusts that's not stainless. Our solution; I sanded down the box and then repainted it using black "Header paint" for car exhaust manifolds. This is serious high temp paint and it has held up pretty well since. 90% reduction in rust. UPDATED - We had an engineering friend recommend we keep the battery pack upwind when possible. This helps keep the breeze on the battery and the system cooler and ideally help the Firepit to last longer. Makes sense to me, so we do this for each fire. Firepit rusted again, but we don't care because it's a Firepit and the extreme conditions are going to affect the paint, bottom line. It's about the fire, not the paint. 5. UPDATED The App: is actually REALLY great. At first, I didn't want to look at my phone while enjoying a fire with friends and family, but controlling the fan via Bluetooth is magical. Really, it's magic to kids and everyone else who's first experiencing the Firepit. It's really nice to just stay in the chair and manage the burn via the app. It's incredibly easy to use and very reliable. 6. Cleaning/Storage: Easy. We let it burn down, then the next day I dump the ash into the trash. I flip the cover and use it more like a bag and put it in our outdoor bins. Keeps it all nice and tidy. Hopefully, this is helpful.