Entrepreneur waxes lyrical over smokeless fire pit idea

Entrepreneur Tim Jeffs believes he has come up with a new solution to a problem nearly as old as mankind itself.

From its necessity to prehistoric man to the enjoyment it provides to anyone who can play Wonderwall on a guitar today, sitting around a bonfire is a core human experience.

But after a few minutes of being wafted in the face with smoke, eyes stinging, many often find themselves spending the entire evening moving their chair aimlessly around the fire pit to avoid the acrid fumes.

An experience made worse by waking up the next day to find your clothes smell like they have been air-drying over the flames.

However, according to Mr Jeffs, who lives in Harpsden, this does not have to be the only way.

His company Eco Fuego, which is based in Market Place, has switched out wood for vegetable wax, to create a “smokeless” and “odourless” flame.

American company Breeo previously claimed to be the first company to have created a “smokeless” fire pit in 2011, which they achieved through more complete combustion of the wood which is the result of oxygen-rich air flow.

However, Eco Fuego say they are the first company to have achieved this using wax rather than wood or gas.

The fire pits are made from a metal drum, the design for which Mr Jeffs has a patent, and users deposit a wax cylinder inside. They claim it to be one of the most eco-friendly products on the market, emitting zero wood smoke and 90 per cent less CO2 than a normal fire pit.

The product was launched for the first time in 2022 at the Summer Outdoor Living Show where it won Best Individual Product for that year and more than 25,000 have since been sold worldwide.

“We’re the first to reinvent fire if you like,” Mr Jeffs said: “You take the lid off, you light it, and within five minutes you have full flame, and if there’s no wood smoke you're not going to smell of a bonfire at the end of the evening. And that’s what people love about it.

“We did a test of our fire pit versus a conventional fire pit with dry wood and wet wood. And the CO2 coming off wet wood was about 19 kilos per hour. Ours kicks out 1.4 kilos.

“By the time you go inside and crack open a bottle of wine and get some peanuts and olives, when you come back out, it's going to be full flame.”

The idea first came to the New Zealand-born entrepreneur in 2021 when lockdown restrictions still prevented indoor gatherings.

Sat with a number of his friends in the garden of his home in Harpsden, he decided to generate some warmth using an agricultural crop candle.

Mr Jeffs who is the owner of logistics company WacPack, had been supplying the candles to a number of vineyards in the country and locally, including Fair Mile Vineyard, Hundred Hills and Kidmore Vineyard.

The candles last for several hours and are used to prevent the formation of a frost pocket to stop the vines from spoiling in harsh winters.

His company helps to provide the 250 candles per hectare needed to heat the vineyards up and keep the buds from being frostbitten.

They are traditionally made using paraffin but Mr Jeffs, who founded the Crop Candle Company in 2020, switched the fuel out for vegetable wax to find a more sustainable alternative.

In the light of the flames of one of these candles outside his home, it was that evening his latest idea was born.

Mr Jeffs said: “After Covid where we could all sit outside, we’d sit around the crop candles.

“We’d had a few beers, and my son said to me “Why don’t we make a fire pit out of it?”

“So the next day we cut a piece of wood in half, hollowed it down and put one of our candles in it. But then it was smoking because it was so hot.

“So then I contacted my suppliers and said I needed to produce some composite that’s going to be able to sustain the heat, and we’ll put our candle inside it.

“We then produced the fire drum, which we patented and that housed the candle, and the rest is history.”

The wax candles burn for up to eight hours and produce 650C of heat, equivalent to about five to six kilowatts.

Three years later the product is sold in Australia, Belgium, Germany, Holland, UK, Ireland, Canada, USA and Chile.

It also featured at BBC Gardeners’ World Live and Grand Design Live.

Mr Jeffs said his design was superior to other “smokeless” brands which use wood or gas for fuel.

He said: “All fire pits either burn wood or gas. Gas doesn’t give out very much colour for heat and there’s no huge flame.

“Wood fire pits give out a good colour for heat and there is a huge flame but with that comes ash, embers, set up, putting out, and smoke.

“You have to burn so much wood to maintain the flame so it’s smokeless. Whereas ours is just more convenient and it’s “light, heat, repeat”.

“People love sitting around the ambience of the fire and what it creates, and not having to worry about constantly loading it with wood.”

In addition to his logistics business Mr Jeffs also runs Jenova, a company he founded 30 years ago which provides promotional merchandise for businesses.

The youngest of seven children, he grew up moving around the world with his father’s property business.

Mr Jeffs, who is dyslexic, left school at 16 and moved to Spain where he spent the next 11 years working for his father.

He moved to the UK in 1972, and has lived in Harpsden since 1992. He is married to Jacky, an illustrator and has three children, Annie, 22, Dan, 26, and Charlie, 29.

He describes himself as a bit of a “serial entrepreneur” and over the years his ideas have included the likes of “Wacky Sails” which aimed to sell advertising on the side of ship sails.

He said the key to success was learning how to give up on an idea before it is too late.

“I look for a problem and then think, okay, I’ll throw everything into it.” Mr Jeffs said.

“I’ve had a lot of companies and a lot of start-ups and stuff and learned how to fail fast.

“You see people on Dragon’s Den who are told not to give up their day job. That’s what failing fast is.

“It’s not going to work. You’re going to have to put too much time and effort into this. You haven’t got the resources for it. Work on your day job.”

Mr Jeffs said his next aim was getting his wax fire pit into a number of well-known retailers in the USA, such as Home Depot, Walmart and Lowe’s.

He said his dream for the product is for it to become his legacy.

“This is something that I want to turn into a $200 million business.

“I want to have retained a percentage of it.” he said.

“And when my kids’ kids are burning a wax fire pit somewhere in the world, they’ll know their grandpa came up with that idea.”