How Far Should a Fire Pit Be From a House? The Number Depends on What You Own

Every site that answers this gives you one number: 10 feet, or 15, or 20, or 25. The fire code gives you several, and which one applies depends on what you own. The code never uses the words “fire pit”. It sorts by the object, then lets your state, your city and your air district change the result. So this guide starts with the object, then goes through the things you actually have to measure from, and ends with what 24 places print in their own documents.

Nothing here is a legal ruling, and it does not come from our own testing. We read the codes, the manuals and the local rules, and we quote them. Your fire department’s non-emergency line outranks this page and every other one.

The answer, by what you own

This is the International Fire Code (IFC), the model most states and cities adopt. The wording is the same in the 2018, 2021 and 2024 editions.

The sorting comes from the definitions. A portable outdoor fireplace is “a portable, outdoor, solid-fuel-burning fireplace that may be constructed of steel, concrete, clay or other noncombustible material” and “may be open in design”. A recreational fire is one “not contained in an incinerator, outdoor fireplace, portable outdoor fireplace, barbeque grill or barbeque pit” with a fuel area of 3 feet or less across and 2 feet or less high.

Two things follow. “Solid-fuel-burning” means a gas table is not a portable outdoor fireplace, whatever a few rival pages say. And a steel bowl and a stone ring in the same yard are under different rules, so the common line that the same distances apply to in-ground and above-ground pits is wrong on the code’s own definitions.

This table is our reading of those definitions, and fire officials do not all use the words the same way. Aurora, Colorado’s bulletin calls portable units fire pits at 15 feet and also labels recreational fires “fire pits” at 25. If your department calls it something else, its reading wins.

Why the internet gives you four numbers

Each number comes from somewhere. Most pages just never say where.

• 10 feet is mostly a safety message. The US Fire Administration’s graphic reads “Keep fire pits, wood piles and propane tanks 10 to 30 feet from your home,” with the pit at 10 or more and the wood pile at 30 or more. It is guidance, not code. The IFC’s own 10-foot rule (308.1.4) is about charcoal burners and open-flame cooking devices, and it exempts one- and two-family homes. A few local rules do use it.
• 15 feet is the portable outdoor fireplace rule above.
• 20 feet is a compromise some sites print with no source. It is also a real local number in at least one town, Wellesley, Massachusetts.
• 25 feet is the recreational fire rule, and it is the number in most fire department handouts.
• “5 to 15 feet for gas” has no code or maker behind it as a general rule. See the gas section.
• “21 feet overhead” repeats across several sites. We could not find a code or fire-service source for it.

One curiosity if you read the code yourself: the 2018 and 2021 IFC print 307.4.3 as “15 feet (3048 mm)”, and 3,048 mm is 10 feet. The 2024 text we read prints 4572 mm. The feet are the rule. Local handouts still reprint the old metric figure.

The exception most pages leave out

The whole of it is one line at the end of 307.4.3: “Exception: Portable outdoor fireplaces used at one- and two-family dwellings.”

So in the model text, a steel pit at a detached house or a duplex has no 15-foot rule. It is the most useful sentence in the section, and pages that print 15 feet as a flat rule skip it. Four limits apply before you move the pit closer.

It covers only portable wood pits. The 25-foot rule for a stone ring has no exception. Neither does the attendance rule, or the ash rule below.

“Dwelling” means one or two units. The IFC defines it as “a building that contains one or two dwelling units”. Townhomes are a local reading: Fairfax County includes them; the model text does not name them.

Your state or city may not have kept it. Minnesota’s fire marshal prints 15 feet with no exception. St. Charles, Illinois, adds its own words: “with due regard for the safety of a structure or combustible material.” Philadelphia and Columbus set their own rules. Fairfax County confirms the exception and then says “A minimum distance of 15 feet from all detached one- and two-family dwellings and townhouses and attached decks is strongly encouraged.”

Your manual still has a number. The makers are often stricter than the code they fall under.

If your state uses NFPA 1, the 15-foot rule was never yours

Some states adopt the National Fire Protection Association’s NFPA 1 instead of the IFC. Florida does, by statute. Delaware and Wisconsin do too, and Wisconsin’s scope is public buildings and places of employment. The list is longer than we could verify, so check yours.

NFPA 1 has no portable-fireplace tier and no 15 feet. In the 2024 edition the rule is:

“Recreational fires shall not be located within 25 ft (7.6 m) of a structure or combustible material unless contained in an approved manner.”

Its recreational fire definition does not carve out a fireplace the way the IFC’s does, so a steel bowl of burning wood is a candidate for the 25 feet. The relief valve is the last five words: “approved” means acceptable to your fire official, so the distance flexes by local approval rather than by house type. There is no one- and two-family exception on this rule.

Two more NFPA 1 lines worth knowing. A person must stay with the fire and have “a garden hose connected to the water supply or other fire-extinguishing equipment readily available”. And openings in outdoor fireplaces need an approved spark arrester, screen or door, which is a code basis for the screen most owners treat as optional.

For Floridians: the current state code is based on the 2021 edition with amendments, and its chapter text is paywalled, so we read the 2024 national edition and cannot quote Florida’s exact wording. Hillsborough County tells residents to “have the pit a minimum of 25 feet from any structure”. Pages that hand Florida readers 15 feet appear to be importing a rule from the other code.

Gas fire pits: the manual is the rule

The fuel gas codes are short on this. The International Fuel Gas Code says permanently fixed outdoor decorative appliances “shall be listed in accordance with ANSI Z21.97 and shall be installed in accordance with the manufacturer’s instructions.” The residential code and NFPA 54 say the same. None prints a distance. So for a fixed gas pit, the manual’s clearance is the legal one. A portable propane bowl is outside those sections on their text, but its listing and manual are still the rule you have.

Here is what the manuals print. Note the last column: makers measure from different places.

So the honest range is 16 to 48 inches, with one outlier at 10 feet that binds that one product. The flat “gas pits need 10 feet” on many pages has no general basis. A manual clearance is a minimum for not igniting the thing beside it, though. It says nothing about warping vinyl, which is the next problem.

Fences, trees, sheds and property lines

Fences. The word is not in either model code. The test is “a structure or combustible material”, and neither term has a definition we could find in IFC Chapter 2. Wood and vinyl are combustible on plain meaning; Minnesota’s fire marshal says “Combustible materials are things such as wood, paper and plastics.” Houston’s standard lists fences by name. A masonry or metal fence is not combustible, but it may still be a structure, so ask.

Sheds, garages, gazebos and pergolas. All are structures. Measure to them as you would the house. A one- and two-family exception is about the house type, so read it for an accessory building only if your fire official does.

Trees and hedges. Also unnamed. Live vegetation as combustible material is a reading, not text. The nearest named figures are Smokey Bear’s “at least 15 feet from tents, vegetation, and low-hanging branches” and NFPA 1’s wildland rule: in a designated hazardous fire area, unprotected or unsupervised heat sources, and its annex names fire pits, are barred within 30 feet of the main structure. That applies to those areas, not to an ordinary suburban lot. Charlotte asks for dry grass and leaves to be cleared 10 feet around the fire.

Property lines. Neither model code mentions one. Every property-line number is local, and pages quoting a typical national setback are guessing. Wellesley says 20 feet, Madison says 15, and most of the cities in our table say nothing.

How to measure. Neither code says whether to measure from the edge, the center or the flame. Measure from the outer edge of the pit. That is the conservative reading, and it is ours.

Propane tanks

Two different questions get mixed up here.

A fire near a propane tank. NFPA 1 extracts this from NFPA 58 as a table measured from the relief valve, in any direction, to an exterior source of ignition: 5 feet for an exchange cylinder and 10 feet for a cylinder or tank filled in place. NFPA 58 does not say “fire pit”, and calling one an ignition source is our reading, but Minnesota’s fire marshal makes the same call in plain words: “Recreational fires must be 10 feet from LP-gas containers that are filled on site by the LP-gas company.”

A propane pit’s own cylinder. Follow the manual. Outland’s Lake Country 800 wants 36 inches between the unit and the cylinder; Hampton Bay type units say a minimum of 5 feet. Tank-inside-the-table designs are the maker’s own listed assembly, so an outside rule does not map onto them. Outland also says not to store a spare cylinder under or near the appliance. For how long that cylinder lasts and why it quits in the cold, see how long a 20 lb propane tank lasts.

Overhead clearance

No model fire code prints an overhead number for a fire pit. What exists:

• Breeo X Series: “at least 10 feet of clearance above the pit from branches or overhangs.”
• East Oak 29: 20 feet in its manual’s diagram.
• Solo Stove 2.0: “Do not use Solo Stove fire pits under any overhead”, with no number.
• Gas manuals: 62 to 96 inches.
• Clark County, Washington: at least 20 feet from tree limbs, patio covers and carports.
• Smokey Bear: “vertical clearance at least 3 times the height of the flames”. That is campground guidance, but it is the only rule with a method: a 3-foot flame needs 9 feet.

A roof, a pergola, a lanai or a pool cage is a separate question from distance, and most manuals answer it with a no. What each maker says about using it under cover has the exact sentences.

What fails first, and why 25 feet is probably not about radiant heat

Vinyl siding goes long before anything burns. Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory’s review lists rigid PVC compounds with heat deflection temperatures of 142 to 192°F. A table in a glass maker’s bulletin, attributed to a Vinyl Siding Institute report, shows how much time matters:

That testing was about sun, not fire, and we found no test of how close a pit must be to warp vinyl, so we will not print a safe distance as if one exists. The warranty position is clear, though. CertainTeed excludes siding “distorted or melted due to an external heat source (including, but not limited to a barbecue grill, fire, or reflection from windows, doors, or other objects).” Alside and Mitten have matching clauses, and Mitten names heat “over and above 160”.

Wood is next. The USDA’s Wood Handbook puts ignition of wood products at a heat flux of 10 to 13 kW/m² and says a safe margin in prolonged exposure comes from keeping the surface below about 80°C (176°F). That is the number for a fence that gets warmed night after night.

We could not find a credentialed measurement of radiant heat from a backyard fire pit, so here is the arithmetic, using the standard point-source method and the top of the usual 10 to 30 percent radiant share. The wood fire sizes are our assumptions, and the model gets less reliable close in.

For scale, peak sunshine is about 0.8 to 1.1 kW/m². At 15 feet even the big fire delivers about a third of that, and at 25 feet about a tenth. So on this arithmetic the code distances are not mainly about a wall catching from radiant heat. Our inference is that they buy margin against embers, a wind-tilted flame and a fire that spreads, and the code’s own wording is about spread: “Conditions that could cause a fire to spread within 25 feet” must be eliminated. Up close, a few feet from sun-heated dark vinyl, a small added heat load is a siding problem long before it is a fire problem.

We found no measured ember distance for a backyard pit either, and we will not invent one. NIST’s firebrand work shows wind-driven embers lighting mulch, and shows that piling up is what does it, so clear the leaves along the fence line and keep mulch beds away.

Local rules, read from their own documents

Read 30 October 2026. A row means we opened that body’s own page or PDF, or a release printing its rule (Clark County’s is an air agency release). Most print 25 and 15, but the range runs from 10 to 50, and three big cities ban or restrict wood entirely. Rules change, so treat this as where to start.

Places we tried and could not source from their own document include Chicago, Denver, Los Angeles County, Atlanta, Nashville, Kansas City and Washington, DC. Massachusetts as a state also would not open, so the two Massachusetts rows are town documents. Beyond this table, burn bans are their own layer: Portland, Oregon, Orange County, Florida, and Jacksonville all banned recreational burning for stretches of 2026.

The rules that survive every exception

Stay with it. IFC 307.5: fires “shall be constantly attended until the fire is extinguished”, with at least one 4-A rated extinguisher “or other approved on-site fire-extinguishing equipment, such as dirt, sand, water barrel, garden hose or water truck”. So a hose counts. The one- and two-family exception does not touch this.

Mind the ashes. IFC 305.2 has no house exception either. Hot ashes may not go in a combustible receptacle, or within 10 feet of combustible material, or within 2 feet of a building opening. The exception: 2 feet from combustibles if they are in a covered, noncombustible bin on a noncombustible surface. A cardboard box of ashes on the deck is how a fire that went out starts again.

Local bans win. The burn bans in the table above reach recreational fires in several places, whatever the distance.

If your yard is too small

Say the 25 feet will not fit, which is true of many suburban lots. You have four honest options.

1. Own the right object. A steel pit at a one- or two-family home in an IFC area may have no code distance at all, where a stone ring would have 25 feet. Check your local adoption first.
2. Go to gas. A carded propane bowl asks for 36 inches to the sides. That can turn a yard that cannot legally hold a wood fire into one that can hold a flame, and propane burns on days a wood fire is banned in places like Maricopa County.
3. Ask for approval. In an NFPA 1 state “contained in an approved manner” gives your fire official room. A call costs nothing.
4. Skip the flame. If you wanted heat and not a fire, an electric patio heater has no fire code distance to meet, only its own clearances.

HOAs, leases and insurance

An HOA or a lease can be stricter than any fire code, so read yours before you buy.

We read insurers’ own pages rather than repeat what rivals say about them. Plymouth Rock says a permanent detached pit “may be covered under your Other structures coverage” and a portable one may count as personal property, and suggests telling your insurer. Mercury says “Not every insurance company treats fire pits the same” and that an insurer “could adjust your coverage or require certain safety measures”. Neither says a fire pit raises your premium or voids your policy. Ask yours, because neither of those pages changes what your policy says.

Where to next

Choosing the pit: the best smokeless fire pits, the larger ones, wood-burning bowls by steel, propane fire pits and fire pit tables. If the only spot you have is a deck, read can you put a fire pit on a deck first: the decking makers have their own view. To throw more heat at the circle you can now safely sit in, see heat deflectors.