Winter is pretty much over – hurrah! – but even if you’re itching to get outside, it’s not quite warm enough to entertain alfresco.
Thankfully, there’s no need to stay cooped up indoors until summer.
These outdoor heating options will take the chill out of the air – and, even better, they’re easy to assemble in your backyard.
Fire pit
Channel a camping vibe and burn wood, heat beads, coal or briquettes around a fire pit. The best thing about this heat source is you’ll enjoy 360 degrees of warmth for everyone to gather around.
It’s that formalisation of the campfire that you had when you were growing up as a kid.
It looks different in a nice formal way – you might have more comfortable chairs and you didn’t have to hike through the bush to get there.
Clear a space in your garden and build a basic fire pit out of stones. If you’re worried about space, Bunnings and Mitre 10 sell portable varieties than can be stored in the garage when the weather heats up.
Pizza oven
If you’re after additional functionality from your heat source, a pizza oven will keep you warm and fill hungry tummies.
At the very least, you’ll need bricks, cement and clay to construct a pizza oven but you can always invite a bunch of friends around for the weekend to help build your very own pizza oven.
Chiminea
Originally used as indoor heaters and ovens in Mexico, rustic chiminea’s have gone global and are now a popular source of outdoor heat that look especially good on decks and verandas.
They burn wood in much the same way as a potbelly stove does, but you can use everything from scrap paper to grass clippings as fuel.
Build your own with clay or buy a ready-made chiminea and style your deck to match. Whichever you choose, consider what you’ll do with the chiminea come summer – Will it serve an ornamental purpose or be stored away?
It pays to keep your exterior spaces flexible year-round so you don’t do something that serves you for three to four months out of the year and then just becomes an inconvenience the rest of the year.
How ever you decide to keep warm, there is nothing better than toasting marshmallows around the fire with friends.
