Simple Brick Grill Designs for Your Modern Outdoor Area
It’s wise to choose brick as your grill material because it’s easy to find, affordable, and adaptable to any design. It also retains heat exceptionally well, and it isn’t challenging to find resources or expertise about this common building material.
Much of the time, builders use cinder blocks for the grill’s inner core and then bricks all around the outside. The larger shapes of the cinder blocks retain heat well and provide a broader base.
Building with bricks and cinder blocks doesn’t take too much skill and is an economical way to create a whole other cooking area for your house. Between the two mediums, you can make many ornamental designs.
Considerations Before You Build
Before you choose which brick grill design suits your expectations the closest, consider the other elements that will make a big difference in your accessibility to and enjoyment of your backyard brick grill. Think about how easy your grill is to access if it has shade in the hottest seasons, and if you want a roof, storage space, or fuel or electric lines.
1. Easy Access
You want your grill to be within shouting distance of your kitchen. At the very least, you should have a clear path from one place to the other, for easy transport of plates, glasses, cutlery, and food, to and from the grill area.
2. Summer Shade
Ideally, you choose a spot for your brick grill that’s out of the way of the strongest rays of the sun. It’s no fun to stand in front of a smoking hot grill at the height of the summer months with no shade.
It’s okay if you don’t have natural shade. You can make some by rigging sails or other three-cornered lightweight cloth above the grilling area.
3. Electric or Propane Lines
Putting in fuel lines or electric wires takes your brick grill to the next level of luxury, but if you’re running electric or propane lines, the specific location matters a lot. Especially with larger brick grill designs, check your local building ordinances to see if you need a permit before you put in fuel lines or electrical access.
Work Surfaces
Brick isn’t the smoothest surface on which to work, and you want your outdoor cooking area to be as convenient as possible. Once you have the base laid, whether in cinder blocks or bricks, you can decide what type of cutting surface you want. Wood or marble both look gorgeous against the reddish hues of brick.
Roof or Awning
If you live in an area that often has inclement weather, you want to consider a semi-permanent roof or awning over your grill so that, including its cover, it’s doubly protected. It can be as simple as waterproof material pulled tightly across the top of the grill or as sturdy as a shed roof over your brick grill.
Where to Put Your Brick Grill?
It’s not just the grill you should be concerned with. The brick grill design you choose should not be unsafe or impede the natural activity in your outdoor area. Smoke and where it flows is also a serious consideration, as is any storage space you need.
1. Level Ground
There are a few options for leveling the ground beneath your grill. If you’re not going to pour concrete or put in flagstones, you should at least make sure that the ground below your feet is reasonably level so that your grilling equipment is standing on even flooring.
2. Smoke
Check general wind directions in your area to make sure that, when you grill, the smoke from the cooking meat won’t flow directly into the windows of your home. Grilled meats may smell great at a barbeque, but you don’t want the smoke and smell clinging to your curtains, clothes, and furnishings.
3. Storage
Some ingenious grills incorporate wood storage into their designs, with some having chambers on either side of the firebox, keeping your stored wood covered and dry. Any area beneath your firebox will be dry and warm most of the time, so this is an excellent space to take advantage of when warming buns and resting pizza dough.
4. Foliage
Take a look around your designated grill space, and note the types of plants that are growing, either in garden beds or in the underbrush. There’s no sense in erecting your brick grill against a patch of poison ivy.
If you grow herbs, consider transferring some to large pots and growing them near your brick grill. They work both as a beautiful green counterpoint to the ruddy brick colors of your grill and provide fresh herb seasoning within easy reach of your outdoor kitchen.
5. Brick Grill Designs
You have a lot of latitude when it comes to what your brick grill will look like. Like LegosTM, you can configure bricks any way you want. Depending on your space and outdoor space layout, you can decide between curved or angled edges, multiple cooking surfaces, or built-in tandooris and bread ovens.
6. L-shaped
An L-shape is the classic shape of a longer grill, giving you an extensive surface on the right on which to prep and serve your grilled offerings. Bricks are a resourceful way to create some lovely designs.
7. Angular
To create a grill that’s a step up from the classic L-shape, you can use broader angles to create a more welcoming U or arched shape if you have space. If you want to add even more, consider multiple levels on which to work.
8. Curved
Bricks can also be used to make graceful curves in your grilling area. Staggering the brick and using a gentle angle will create an undulating effect.
9. Multiple Cooking Areas
In the most extravagant grilling setups, there are two or more grills, but you can easily incorporate multiple cooking surfaces into your grill design. Pizza ovens or a built-in tandoori oven are lavish accouterments to a brick grill.
Doug Stephen
The Last Word
Building with brick is a practical and easy way to create an outdoor kitchen area. Building with brick is a practical and easy way to create an outdoor kitchen area. Built-in BBQ grill plans should depend on the available outdoor area terrain. You should set your brick grill on a level area, plan for easy accessibility and low smoke contamination, and consider putting in a propane line or electricity for added flair. Brick grills are easy to build and easy to use, look great in wood, retain heat, and are a valuable asset to your home.