The propane bottle
Everything here runs on propane from a standard twenty pound bottle, which is the same cylinder a barbecue uses. Some tables are built with a compartment in the base to hold it out of sight. Where a table has no compartment, a hideaway cover is sold separately as its own product: a small table sized enclosure that stands beside the fire pit with the bottle inside it.
This is the detail people discover after delivery and not before. A table with an enclosed base is a single object that can stand anywhere; a table without one needs a bottle beside it and a plan for where that sits in the seating arrangement. Which arrangement a particular table uses is settled before the furniture goes around it.
Fire pit table shapes
The range runs from a 32 inch round through to 56 inch rectangles. A round table puts everyone the same distance from the flame, which suits four chairs arranged in a circle and keeps the conversation together.
A rectangle works with a sofa or a bench along one side and suits a longer terrace, where a round table would leave awkward space at the ends. It also gives more usable surface, since the area away from the burner is what drinks and plates actually go on.
Burner output
The burners here are commonly rated at 50,000 BTU, which is comparable to a mid sized barbecue and considerably more than a decorative flame. That is enough to feel across a seating circle rather than only to look at.
Lava rock over the burner is the usual finish, and it does three things at once: it spreads the flame across the opening instead of leaving a row of jets, it holds heat, and it covers the burner hardware. It is what makes the fire read as a fire rather than as a gas ring.
Concrete bodies
Most of these tables have concrete bodies, some finished with a faux stone pattern. Concrete suits the job for practical reasons: it is heavy enough to stay put in wind, it tolerates heat close to the burner, and it is a material that is already used outdoors for everything from paving to structure. A steel body answers the same brief differently, with less weight to position and a finer line, which suits a terrace where the table may need to move.
The weight is doing a job: a concrete table stays exactly where it is put, through wind and through people leaning on it. It rewards deciding the position with the seating plan, rather than moving it about afterwards.
Cooking grates
Where a table carries an adjustable rotating grill grate over the fire, it becomes somewhere food can be cooked as well as somewhere to sit.
It is a different kind of cooking from a barbecue: an open flame under a grate is direct heat, which suits skewers, sausages and anything that cooks quickly while people are sitting around it. A closed grill with a lid and controlled burners is built for a different job, which the grills range covers.
Placing a fire pit table
A fire pit table is usually the center of a seating group, not an edge piece, so the space around it matters as much as its own footprint: chairs need room to pull back, and people need to pass behind them.
Clearances from walls, fences, overhead structures and furniture are set by the manufacturer of the specific table, and those figures are the ones to work from when the terrace is laid out. If the terrace itself is still being built, the granite pavers and cobblestone range covers the surface.
