Outdoor Kitchens & Fire Features in Waukesha County

Outdoor kitchens and fire features.

The expensive part is not the appliances. It is the gas, power, water and drainage that have to be in the ground before anything is paved over.

An outdoor kitchen added later costs far more than the same kitchen built in from the start, and it is not the cabinetry that makes the difference. It is that the services have to be run, and running them means lifting a finished patio.

Decide this before the base goes in

Gas, electrical, water supply and drainage all want to be trenched while the ground is already open. Even if a feature is a phase-two idea, running a conduit and capping it costs very little now and saves taking up a terrace later.

The same applies to a fire feature that might one day be gas rather than wood. A gas line installed and capped is inexpensive; retrofitting it is a demolition job.

Siting on a suburban lot

Yards here usually have neighbours on three sides and a house on the fourth, which makes two things matter more than they would on an acre:

• Smoke. Where it goes on a normal evening decides whether the neighbours mind. Prevailing wind and the position of their windows and patios are worth ten minutes of thought at the design stage.
• Noise and light. Sound carries between close houses, and a bright fitting aimed the wrong way is in someone's kitchen window. Both are avoidable by design and awkward to fix afterwards.

Clearances are not negotiable

A fire feature needs distance from seating, from structures, from the house and from anything overhanging - eaves, a pergola, low branches. Establish those before the position is fixed, because a built-in feature is permanent and the numbers do not bend.

The surface around it works harder

Heat, grease, spills, chairs dragged across it and traffic concentrated in a few square feet. That zone is worth specifying separately from the rest of the patio rather than assuming one surface suits both.

Winter, since it is half the year

Anything with a water supply needs proper winterisation, and it needs to be simple enough that it actually happens in November. Appliances and cabinetry need to tolerate being cold, wet and unused for months. This is where cheap outdoor kitchen units reveal themselves - not in the first summer but in the second spring.

Where to start

A site visit, before the patio design is settled rather than after. A local licensed and insured contractor works out what services the feature needs and where they can run, so the trenching happens once. You get a written plan and a figure for your yard, at no charge.