How to Create an Outside Living Space

garden designs to fit your individual tastes

Are you looking to create a useable patio area or extend the use of an outdoor entertaining area into winter?

Tony Young from Urban Fires has more than 30 years of experience designing fireplaces and their external fireplaces and fire pits are constantly used by designers to help create these warm, inviting outside living areas.

The range of external fireplaces from Urban Fires is wide and varied to suit all types of garden design or individual tastes but below Tony explains how to incorporate one of these modern external fire places into your own garden design

#AsktheExpert: Tony Young, Designer at Urban Fires

There are two very different design options that are available to our clients looking for an external fireplace. The first is our sleek stainless steel gas fireplace. No flue or exhaust exit is required which can help create a really neat, modern design and they can be fuelled by either Natural main gas or bottled Propane gas. The only other power required for these fireplaces are a set of D cell batteries to give the ignition (alternatively you could use a 240V mains transformer kit).

When it comes to design and appearance you could opt for a sleek stainless steel exterior facia, or a dark volcanic stone finish. Different fuel bed designs are also available from logs, pebbles or crystals.

Even with these minimal designs the external fireplaces can kick out up to 16 kW of energy to keep an external seating area warm and comfortable whatever the climate.  

As the fireplace is ‘zero-clearance’ it can be installed right up against combustible materials allowing the fireplace enclosure to be integrated into your chosen masonry or decking layout within the garden and installed right against party walls.

Alternatively use a freestanding design with our ready-made Kitset frame which can be clad in marine ply and rendered, ceramic tiles, limestone panels or more!

For an even more impressive fireplace design Urban Fires can design frameless, bespoke fireplaces for garden use. By using the basis of our weatherproof gas fire place we can extend these fire elements and create a frameless exterior by rendering right up to the fire opening.

Wood burning fires are also an option and can then double as a BBQ!

These external wood burning fires will require a flue/exhaust pipe and a non-combustible surrounding of masonry, stone, concrete or brickwork. The external appearance can still be frameless or with a facia design to suit.

For more expert advice about integrating a fireplace into your garden design, creating a modern external living space, contact Urban Fires and visit them at Sky House Design Centre.