Brick the grill yourself – building instructions for a garden grill

The brick grill is one of the best garden grills, simple in material, adaptable in function/shape, you do not need to check pollution. You don’t have to spend four-digit sums like for the designer grill made of stainless steel, and it still fits better in some natural gardens than the sparkling design monster – the garden grill area is after all not a large hotel kitchen. Can you do it, build a grill yourself? Yes, sure, it’s even ideal for practicing, because it doesn’t matter at all if a little air is drawn through the grill, the better the charcoal burns. The garden grill is probably only the first of many brick garden buildings.

The stand

Before you deal with the building instructions for a garden grill, the location must be determined, the subsoil there plays a role in the creation of the garden grill. These considerations can go into determining the location of a grill:

  • The wind that prevails most often in your area should blow the barbecue smells somewhere else, just not to your seat, into the house or to the neighbors who live nearby.
  • The barbecue area at the back of the garden can be very romantic.
  • The grill on the terrace will make you grill more often.
  • In addition, he is in the right place at a party – the kitchen for supplies is very close.
  • However, the grill should be given a place that lets you sit in the garden without getting hungry right away…
  • A location somewhere on the edge that can be completely hidden with two or three planters would be ideal.
  • Or you can build the grill at a height that becomes an additional table with a plate.

The underground

must be level, otherwise the walls will not work. These substrates are usually just enough:

  • Concrete terrace, logically, and terrace laid with stone slabs too, of course.
  • If you want to build a giant grill, the load-bearing capacity of such terrace substructures should be checked.
  • Even the small grill, which is presented below for the walls itself, weighs around half a ton.
  • Long compacted soil surfaces, in which no living root growth takes place, are also suitable.
  • In the case of terrace coverings with a load-bearing substructure, but made of wood/wood composite material such as WPC, the subsurface needs fire protection.
  • This could e.g. B. consist of a large metal plate on which the grill is placed.

It becomes difficult if you have a flat surface available, but it has a clear “list”. Sausages roll off the grill in the wrong direction if they list, steaks burn very quickly on the left and take forever on the right… You could possibly use a little inequality consciously: Meat that needs more heat is grilled on the right, vegetables that you should stew more on the left . If only meat ends up on the grill anyway, or if a real abyss opens up, you would either have to fill up earth and compact it well, depending on the subsoil, or place a row of lightweight concrete blocks under the grill, which you can work on with a coarse rasp in such a way that they form a horizontal surface.

The barbecue area in the middle of the garden

The better your garden soil (loose, humus-rich, worked through by soil life), the less suitable it is to provide a permanent place for a grill. You have the following options:

  • The stand for the grill must become a level surface.
  • How you do that depends on the terrain.
  • Rake, old knife, milling machine, spade, everything can make sense.
  • If roots of an adjacent plant are affected, you should inquire whether you could harm this plant.
  • You could place a large sheet of metal on the leveled floor.
  • Upper a series of concrete slabs.
  • Or you pour a solid foundation as a subsurface, with the “barbecue area for eternity” founded frost-free.
  • An alternative to the large foundation plate is a base plate 20.30 cm thick, which merges into a frost-proof strip foundation 80 cm deep under the side walls of the grill.

The alternatives

If you’re struggling to find the perfect location for your brick barbecue because you realize you don’t have the space for a permanent barbecue in your backyard, now is the time to rethink the whole project.

The following alternatives are available:

  • Electric grill that is simply placed on the table.
  • It is recommended if you are barbecuing in small groups in the summer.
  • The electric grill can be used every day, it does not need to be set up or heated up for a long time and it hardly produces any smoke.
  • The grilled food from the electric grill is healthier because there are no charcoal residues or burnt fat.
  • The electric grill makes you independent of the weather, in case of sudden rain you can continue grilling in the house.
  • An interesting alternative is a gas grill on a tripod stand.
  • It is available with cast iron grill plates with a ribbed and smooth side.
  • The ridged grill side provides the perfect steak, the smooth side can be used like a hot stone.
  • You can also set up a paella pan and a wok.
  • You can cook anything that can be cooked in a pan in the paella pan.
  • The same goes for the wok, you can also turn it over and use it as a baking hood.
  • So you can also make tarte flambée and pizza, fried chicken and fries
  • For the big party you can still set up the good old tripods
  • That makes you independent, for the children’s party the grills are close by, for adult meetings in the back garden.

If the brick barbecue fits easily into your garden, you can start:

Grill probestapeln

An easy-to-brick garden grill basically consists of a “U”. This is bricked up to 64 cm, then three window lintels are placed across, 5 more “U” layers are bricked up above them, on the lintels a layer of clinker is laid loosely on sand. It couldn’t be simpler, but it’s still worth stacking the whole thing up beforehand, newcomers to bricklaying quickly get confused with the alternating joining of the half bond; also you may want to vary the heights.

You need the stone material (stone standard size 24 x 11.5 x 7.1):

  • 3 stones at the back, 2 stones to the front on the left of the edge at the back, 1.5 stones to the front on the right of the stone.
  • Results in external dimensions of 84 x 48 plus joints, grilling area 61 x 36 plus joints.
  • In each layer, a different side of the “U” ends with a half or whole stone, this is the so-called half bond.
  • You need 6.5 stones per layer, height 7.1 + joint = 8 cm, with 8 layers 64 cm and 8 x 6.5 stones = 52 stones up to the window lintel.
  • For the lateral stones of the 3rd to 5th layer, a piece of stone can be milled out inside to form the “U”, then you can insert a storage board here.
  • The lintels are placed with a little space in between so that the fire area is ventilated from below.
  • They bring another 8 cm, on top of them the next layer is laid, in which a layer of loose clinker is later laid on the inside.
  • Now we are at a height of 80 cm, the charcoal is placed at this height (a back-friendly model was calculated here, most grills are lower).
  • 4 more layers = 32 cm of wind protection result in a grill of approx. 112 m, because we calculated with exactly 0.9 cm gap per layer.
  • We now have a total of 8 stone layers, 1 window lintel layer + firing surface (with 1 stone layer on the outside), another 4 stone layers = 14 layers of around 8 cm each = 112 cm.
  • In addition to the 52 stones for the first 8 layers, there are 5 stone layers = 32.5 stones, you need a total of 84.5 clinker bricks to build the grill.
  • A bed of sand is placed on the fire surface, on which clinker bricks are loosely laid on the inside of the grilling surface.
  • In our case you need 7 whole stones, 1 stone cut in half lengthwise and the half stone left over from the wall, so you need to buy 93 clinker bricks.
  • They cost you around €100 in a hardware store, plus around €30 for the lintels, you can get the material used for half that or less.
  • In the 2nd and 3rd layer above the fire surface, holes are drilled in the middle on the left front, right front and back in the stone, into which metal pins are inserted as a grill support.

If you want a really impressive grill, you can add an extra stone at the back and on each side. Then you need 9.5 stones per layer, the external dimensions increase to 108 x 72 cm, grilling surface to 85 x 60 cm, each plus joints. If there is frequent strong wind on one side, you could build a little higher wall there as a windbreak.

Mauern wants to be prepared

And that’s especially good if you’re a beginner approaching a bricklayer’s trowel for the first time … You should first have all the accessories ready to hand before you get started. What is needed besides the stone material:

  • Cut-off grinder for milling out the clinker corners for the shelf
  • shelf
  • Drill with suitable drill bit for the metal pins that become the grill pad
  • 6 metal pins as a support for the grill grate
  • grill grate
  • Mason’s hammer, this is the two-sided hammer that has a hammer head on one side and a sharp edge on the other side
  • trowel
  • level
  • Zollstock
  • Senklot
  • guideline
  • A board the thickness of the joint (1 cm)
  • A rounded piece of wood or cut tubing to smooth the joints

When everything is in place, the grill has been successfully stacked for the test and you have a plan of where to start, you can start mixing the grout. It is best to use a ready-mixed dry mortar that you only need to mix with water. You should know how quickly you need to work the mortar and mix only enough mortar to get the job done. By the way, you don’t necessarily need expensive fireclay mortar, normal mortar will do for this grill too.

This is how brickwork is done

Put a thick blob of mortar on the floor with a mason’s trowel, lay the clinker, press down well and tap until there is about a centimeter of mortar under the stone, brick by brick… The most important is the first row, if it gets crooked, the rest will always slate. So carefully align with the spirit level, including the entire layer. Mortar is placed on top of this again, giving a 1 cm layer when the next brick is in place. The gaps from brick to brick are precisely measured with the joint board and then filled with mortar. The mortar is allowed to protrude a little everywhere, always after two or three layers wipe off the excess with the tool you have prepared beforehand.

Other BBQ Ideas

The basic idea of ​​the brick garden grill is two walls with a fire surface and a grill grate, and this gives many more possibilities:

  • Bigger, smaller, taller, lower, wider, deeper – it all takes a bit of drawing and arithmetic, but it’s easily doable.
  • The cooking grate is the heart of the barbecue, you can wall your grill around an existing, good cooking grate.
  • However, you can also have a locksmith make a grill grate according to your wishes
  • For example, a triangular grate (a round one would also work) for a grilling area with two walls.
  • You can build your grill out of natural stones (although this is a bit of fiddling until the stones fit reasonably)
  • Or you can build a round grill or a half-round one, maybe with a decorative arch over it…
  • The grill for the big parties consists of two “Us” in opposite directions, so a lot of people are fed.

Conclusion
You can brick a garden grill yourself, of course, leveling the subsoil is usually more difficult than bricking. Even if you have never built bricks before, a grill is an ideal practice object, which is then followed by the really large planters, the raised pond and the little wall around the herb garden

Kira Bellingham

I'm a homes writer and editor with more than 20 years' experience in publishing. I have worked across many titles, including Ideal Home and, of course, Homes & Gardens. My day job is as Chief Group Sub Editor across the homes and interiors titles in the group. This has given me broad experience in interiors advice on just about every subject. I'm obsessed with interiors and delighted to be part of the Homes & Gardens team.

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