Complete Guide to EcoSmart Fire Pit Kits: Models, Sizes, and Installation

The range covers six models built around two burner platforms. The compact pair, Round 20 and Square 22, share the AB8 burner and a single-flame footprint sized for courtyards, balconies, and tight interior pockets. The four linear models, Linear 50 through Linear 130, use the award-winning XL900 burner in single, dual, or triple configurations, scaling from intimate lounge benches up to commercial pool decks and hospitality centrepieces.

The fuel choice is, in practice, one binary question dressed up as three. Bioethanol is the only fuel certified for indoor use across the range. Liquid propane and natural gas are outdoor-only by certification, full stop. If the kit is going inside the building envelope, the answer is bioethanol; everything else is a conversation about outdoor preferences.

Outdoors, the trade-off is supply, burn time, and heat output:

Sizing happens on two axes that are easy to confuse. The first is physical: how the tray sits in the seating arrangement, what proportion the surround needs to be, whether a circular flame matches the geometry or fights it. The second is thermal: how much heat the burner contributes, how large the entertaining zone is, and whether the kit is being asked to set atmosphere or carry real warmth.

For the thermal side, the industry rule of thumb is roughly 20 BTU per square foot of conditioned space. That is a useful sanity check, not a specification: outdoor heat dissipation, wind, ceiling height, and seating distance all change the answer. The published coverage figures, 60 m² for the compact and mid-linear kits, 120 m² for the Linear 90, 180 m² for the Linear 130, are conservative still-air estimates that match the burner's atmospheric reach when guests are seated within the immediate ring of warmth.

For indoor bioethanol installation, the constraint is regulatory rather than thermal. The European standard EN 16647 specifies minimum room volumes for unvented decorative bioethanol appliances, and EcoSmart Fire's first-party specifications follow it across the range:

The installation runs in four ordered phases. The first phase is paperwork, not bricklaying.

1. Verify clearances and the surface specification. Confirm side, overhead, and ceiling clearances against the model's spec sheet. Confirm the surround base is non-combustible (stone, concrete, brick, tile, masonry); never grass, artificial turf, carpet, or any surface that blocks airflow underneath. For indoor bioethanol installs, confirm the room volume meets the minimum for the chosen burner configuration.

2. Build the surround with a prepared aperture. The surround is the designer's territory. The only mandates are non-combustibility, the correct aperture dimensions for the tray, and the ventilation cutouts required for gas configurations.

3. Drop in the tray, fit the burner, add the media. With the surround complete, the tray lowers into the aperture, the burner seats inside the tray, and the decorative black glass charcoal covers the burner with clearance around the sparker. For linear models, the XL Baffles fit before media is loaded. For indoor bioethanol installations on the compact pair, the Indoor Safety Tray and AB8 Burner Efficiency Ring fit at this stage.

4. Connect the fuel. For bioethanol, this means filling the reservoir from the supplied jerry can and igniting with the lighting rod after the recommended cool-down. For gas, this means a licensed gas connection (propane bottle in the cavity or plumbed natural gas), with the ventilation openings already cut into the surround as specified.

The bioethanol installation is genuinely homeowner-completable on a competent DIY day, because there is no permanent fuel connection. The gas installation is a two-trade project: the surround build first, then a licensed gas fitter for the connection. Either route, the kit itself doesn't need on-site combustion engineering, which is the whole point of the format. The factory has already done that work, and the certification proves it.

One detail that often surprises first-time specifiers: the gas configuration requires two sets of ventilation openings, one top and one bottom, on one sidewall, plus an equal set at minimum 90 degrees from it. The point is cross-flow under the tray, so that any leaked gas escapes rather than pools. The bioethanol configuration has no equivalent, because there is no pressurised fuel storage in the cavity.

Clearance figures are the part of the installation that survives every other design decision. They define what the surround can sit next to, how high a pergola can be, and whether the kit can go under a covered alfresco at all. The first-party numbers for the gas configuration are:

• Side clearance to fixed furniture: 24 in [610 mm] from the flame

• Overhead clearance to movable items (curtains, hanging plants, low branches): 78.7 in [2,000 mm] from the flame

• Ceiling or overhang clearance: 72 in [1,829 mm] from the top of the burner

• Ground airflow gap: ½ in [12.5 mm] minimum between the ground surface and the underside of the appliance sidewalls

Industry guidance for higher-output gas burners tracks the same logic. Specifications continuously reviewed by the Canadian Standards Association, published by HPC Fire Inspired in Chuck Parsons's clearance briefing, recommend 36 inches horizontal and 84 inches overhead for burners up to 200,000 BTU/hr, rising to 48 inches horizontal with no overhead structures for the 201,000–400,000 BTU/hr band. The principle is the same one threaded through the EcoSmart figures: the higher the output, the more space the flame and its rising heat plume need to dissipate safely.

Indoors, the bioethanol ventilation rule does the same job that side clearance does outdoors. 5.7 m³ (200 ft³) of room volume per 1,000 BTU/hr of appliance rating gives the combustion enough air exchange to keep water vapour and trace CO₂ at safe levels. The Indoor Safety Tray and AB8 Burner Efficiency Ring (compact models) handle the rest of the indoor compliance picture, the bits the room volume alone can't cover.

The certification picture is unusually clean for a range that operates across four jurisdictions. The bioethanol burners are UL 1370 listed (the binational North American standard for unvented alcohol-fuelled decorative appliances), EN 16647 certified through BSI (the European and UK standard for decorative bioethanol appliances), and compliant with ACCC recommendations in Australia. The gas burners carry ANSI Z21.97-2017 / CSA 2.41-2017 marks for North America, CE marking under the EU Gas Appliance Regulation 2016/426, and UKCA marking for the UK.

Two practical caveats sit under that headline. First, the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission's December 2024 consumer alert linked two deaths and at least 60 serious burn injuries since 2019 to non-compliant pooled-fuel tabletop fire pits that violate ASTM F3363-19. Those products pour liquid alcohol into an open container, which creates the pool-fire and flame-jetting hazards the standard exists to prevent. The closed-burner, factory-sealed architecture of a certified fire pit kit avoids that scenario entirely. The dividing line between dangerous and safe in the bioethanol category is precisely the certification stamp.

Second, the gas configuration of the fire pit kit range is not sold in Australia. Australian projects run the bioethanol versions of the same six models, with identical trays, dimensions, and surround logic, just without the LP and natural-gas options.

The decision collapses to three questions, asked in order.

Indoor or outdoor? Indoor narrows the answer to bioethanol immediately. Outdoor opens the full fuel menu and turns the next question into a heat-output one.

Compact or linear? This is the geometry question, not the size question. Compact (Round 20, Square 22) suits centrepieces, intimate seating, and tight footprints. Linear (50, 65, 90, 130) suits benches, room dividers, and architecture that reads in long horizontal lines. The shape of the surrounding furniture answers this faster than the floorplan does.

Residential, hospitality, or commercial scale? Residential and small hospitality usually land on the compact pair or the Linear 50/65. Hospitality at scale and most commercial briefs land on the Linear 90 or 130, both because of coverage and because the visual proportion needs the length to sit correctly in larger spaces.

Final selection benefits from a conversation with a specifier or with EcoSmart's sales team, particularly on the gas-versus-bioethanol question for covered outdoor zones where the wrong choice creates a clearance problem that the surround can't fix. The kit is the easy part. The site is where the variables live.

Without a structured range, every fire feature becomes a custom-engineering exercise: a one-off burner, a one-off certification path, a one-off install sequence, and a budget that grows every time the surround changes. The kit format removes the engineering risk from the equation so the surround can carry the design. That is the quiet argument for the whole category, and it is the argument the six models in this range are built to make.