Gas Fire Pit Tables: Combining Function and Style for Outdoor Living

A gas fire pit table is an outdoor table with a built-in fire feature that burns either propane or natural gas, surrounded by a usable surface for drinks, plates, or decorative objects. The flame sits within a central burner pan filled with lava rock or fire glass, and the table doubles as both heat source and gathering point.

Homeowners reach for them because they collapse two pieces of furniture into one. You get the warmth and visual centrepiece of a fire feature, plus the practical surface of an outdoor table, without giving up floor space to a separate fire pit. For most outdoor entertaining setups, that combination is the appeal.

The choice between propane and natural gas comes down to where the table will live and how often you want to refuel. Across the wider gas fire pit category, both fuel types are common, and the trade-offs sit in the same four columns every time.

Here is the option most buyer's guides skip past. A bioethanol fire pit table runs on liquid plant-derived fuel that burns cleanly without smoke, soot, or a gas connection. For homeowners weighing the propane-versus-natural-gas trade-off, it can dissolve the dilemma altogether.

Placement freedom is the first shift. A bioethanol fire table needs no gas line, no permits, and no licensed installer, so you can put it where the room wants it rather than where the plumbing allows. Move it to a different terrace next summer if your entertaining habits change. The burn quality is different too. Bioethanol combustion produces only heat, water vapour, and a small amount of CO₂ equivalent to what the source crops absorbed while growing, which means no smoke, no ash, and no soot stains on a stone patio. Beyond that, premium bioethanol fire tables tend to be built as design objects in their own right, in GFRC concrete, weathered teak, or powder-coated steel, with proportions closer to sculpture than barbecue accessory.

The trade-off is heat output. Bioethanol burners typically run between 20,000 and 28,000 BTU/hr (5.9 to 8.2 kW), so the flame is ambient rather than space-heating. If you sit close, you feel it. If you need to warm a fifteen-person dinner across an exposed terrace in midwinter, gas does more work. The good news is most homeowners want ambience, not a radiator, and bioethanol gives you that on a covered patio without ventilation requirements. EcoSmart Fire’s range includes models like the Cosmo 50 and Manhattan 50, which sit firmly in the design-object tier and double as low-slung sculptural pieces between gatherings.

Safety is the other piece worth raising. EcoSmart Fire’s burners are O-TL Listed to UL 1370 in the United States, certified to EN 16647 in the EU and UK, and compliant with the ACCC Safety Mandate in Australia. That certification level is the bar to ask for when comparing models, because the category has had bad actors: the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission has linked non-certified liquid-burning fire pits to two deaths and at least 60 injuries since 2019, all involving products that violate the ASTM F3363-19 voluntary standard. Certified products are a different proposition entirely.

Two practical decisions shape the choice once you have settled on fuel type.

The first is table footprint relative to the area around it. As a rough rule, leave 900 mm [35.4 in] of circulation space on every side of the table, both for chair pull-out and for safe clearance from the flame. A 1,200 mm [47.2 in] round table needs a circle of roughly 3,000 mm [118.1 in] to feel uncrowded. Squeezed into a tighter spot, the table works as a coffee feature but stops serving as a dining or conversation hub.

The second is height. Match it to how you want to use the table.

The right fire pit table is the one that fits how you actually live outdoors, not the one with the highest BTU rating on the page. Whether you choose gas for sheer heat output or bioethanol for clean burn and design freedom, the job is the same: a warm centre of gravity that pulls people outside and keeps them there.