Fire Features
Custom fire features in Northern Virginia
Fire Pits and Outdoor Fireplaces
A fire feature is the difference between a patio people use in June and one they use in October. It is also, in practice, where everyone ends up standing.The distinction that matters is between a fire feature that was designed into the space and one that was set down on top of it. Holloway Company builds the former. The fire pit and the seat wall around it get drawn together, the gas line gets run before the pavers go down, and the stone on the fireplace matches the stone on the patio because both were specified at the same time.
Choosing the Right Fire Feature
Outdoor fireplace
A vertical mass with a firebox and chimney. A fireplace does something a fire pit cannot: it defines an edge, blocks wind, and gives a patio a back wall. On an exposed site or a property where one boundary faces a neighbor, that is often the deciding factor. It also draws smoke up and away rather than into whoever is downwind.
Fire pit
Open on all sides, which makes them the social option. Everyone faces in. Best where the fire is the destination rather than an edge of the space. Round and square are both common, and the surround can be built to double as seating, which removes the need for furniture that has to be dragged around.
Fire tables
A flame at table height, usually gas. The practical choice for a covered porch or a smaller patio where an open pit would take too much room, and where people want to set a drink down.
Gas or Wood
Wood delivers the fire people picture: the sound, the smell, the actual heat. It also means storing wood, cleaning ash, and waiting for it to catch.
Gas lights instantly, produces no smoke or ash, and shuts off when you go inside. On a Tuesday evening in October, that difference decides whether the fire gets lit at all. Gas requires a line run to the feature, which is inexpensive during construction and disruptive afterward.
The decision is worth making early. Running a gas line under a finished patio means taking the patio apart.
Built Into the Space
Fire features touch nearly everything else outside:
Patios and walkways. The surround, seat wall, and paving get specified together, so the stone matches rather than approximates.
Porches. A gas fireplace in a covered porch extends the usable season considerably, and the venting has to be planned with the roof structure.
Outdoor kitchens. Fire feature and cooking zone are separate rooms in the same space. Placing them well keeps the fire from being where the cook is standing.
Decks. Fire on a deck requires the right structural detail and the right hearth material.
See It Burning First
Fire is one of the few things a rendering cannot really convey. Holloway Company’s design center in Dulles has multiple fireplaces and fire pits installed across roughly an acre of outdoor display, in stone, at full scale. That showroom took First Place for Greatest Showroom in the 2020 NADRA National+ awards and Second Place for Best Product Display in 2022.
Materials come through our retail partner, Outdoor Living Way, whose stoneyard stocks fire pit kits, fireplaces, fire tables, and the stone veneer used to face them.