Is there any concensus on what the most efficient size of charcoal pit is?

[Maelstrom]

Just answering your questions.  You don't have to be snarky about it.

[Dark Thoughts]

I'm not snarky, I'm just explaining the discrepancy of understanding here. You don't have to be offended by it.

[Lemonspray55555]

I had a gut feeling that the deeper the pit the more efficient so I deepened my 2 by 8 pit 10 down at its lowest but at 5 down I added a packed dirt "door" to my basement and the bottom spirals like a stair down. So far I am not sure if I was correct but what I do know is that the resulting charcoal is uneven and sometimes slides and falls disappearing still I get hundreds of charcoal. Maybe someone need only to make a few 11 block test charcoal stair pits.

[Lemonspray55555]

I did some tests with stair case pits, I think it supports my belief that deeper is more efficient but their are outliers.

^ In this image I would note that aside from max depth the deeper areas are most efficiently converted.

^ In the 2 leftmost pits the peak at 2nd most depth lost less than 4 layers of charcoal compared to the shallows left of incomplete pit which consistently halved.

[Dilan Rona]

tried a massive 11x11x11 charcoal pit. with the firepit fire ignited at top. Only 11x11x10 of the wood stacks turned to charcoal, leaving the bottom most wood layer untouched, and unburned.

[Lemonspray55555]

The initial fire place counts as part of the 11*11*11 bounds, also I found out that charcoal flows in this image I set the fire in the bottom and it filled with charcoal so you don't need to place the fire above the firewood e.g

F = firewood X = starting fire.

FFX instead of   X

FFF                  FFF

[Broccoli Clock]

@Lemonspray55555 you get some hearts just for taking this to the extremes!

I was only posing a general question in my first post, but fair play to you for extrapolating and with images too!

[NateDatKat]

Id actually wager to say 2x2s are the least efficient due to the auto waste of 4 firewood for the fire on top, and that being a higher percent to the total of your firewood, would make it a fair bit less efficient per firing then a max 11x11 (I like my 4X4X4 but am going to do a big upgrade to 10x10x10 so I don’t have to fire it up for a long while)

[ZanChirou]

On 3/18/2025 at 11:50 PM, LadyWYT said:

The general loss ratio seems to be fairly consistent, regardless of pit size. I say that just from making a rough guess based on what I've dug out of my charcoal pits, not because I've sat down and crunched every number.

That being said, I'd wager the "most efficient" depends heavily on the context of how much you need versus how much effort you want to put into it. A giant pit will net you a LOT of charcoal(like, I think I built a 7x7x7, which isn't max size, and got almost two full crates of charcoal), but will also take a significant effort to fill. A small pit is easily filled, but isn't very useful if you need a lot of charcoal.

I would say small pits are the most efficient in the early game, with moderate-size pits probably being the most efficient overall. They aren't as much hassle to fill as the huge pits, and provide decent amounts of charcoal per firing, meaning that it's easy enough to fire the pit 2-3 a week at most. Of course, if you'd rather just have a couple crates of charcoal after one firing, and not need to bother with it for a long time, then making a huge pit will probably be a more efficient use of your time.

Tried making 7x7x7 too, watching some yt tutorials on how to make big ones, but no matter how i did it and where i placed the firepit, every time firewood just dissapeared. One time it just laid scattered on the floor with no way of being picked up. Meanwhile we made identical one on the multiplayer server and it worked fine so i just don't know anymore. Double checked for gaps etc each time.  
 

[Vexxvididu]

I think the answer to this question is that bigger pits are always more efficient since you lose the camp fire no matter what the size and must wait for your charcoal to complete.  The most efficient pit is the biggest one you feel like making!  I usually do at least 3x3.  Often going bigger as I progress.

[MKMoose]

1 hour ago, Vexxvididu said:

I think the answer to this question is that bigger pits are always more efficient since you lose the camp fire no matter what the size and must wait for your charcoal to complete.  The most efficient pit is the biggest one you feel like making!  I usually do at least 3x3.  Often going bigger as I progress.

This is, indeed, the correct answer. Verified in practice and in the code - besides the firepit cost, there is no efficiency difference between different configurations of charcoal pits (or at least, there shouldn't be).

That said, the inefficiency of small pits is not very significant - a tiny 2x2x2 charcoal pit (8 stacks of firewood plus a firepit) loses just 1.5% efficiency to the firepit (i.e. provides 1.5% less charcoal for the same amount of firewood as a maximum-size firepit would give), whereas a larger 5x5x5 charcoal pit loses a completely negligible 0.1%. The difference is so low that it effectively doesn't matter in practice as long as your charcoal pits are not laughably small. Even the smallest possible charcoal pit - a single stack of firewood with a firepit on top - loses 11.1% efficiency due to the firepit, which is nontrivial but not all that much.

And by the way, the wiki is inaccurate since 1.21.0-pre.1 - each stack of firewood now produces 4 to 8 charcoal, 6 on average.

[LadyWYT]

4 hours ago, ZanChirou said:

Tried making 7x7x7 too, watching some yt tutorials on how to make big ones, but no matter how i did it and where i placed the firepit, every time firewood just dissapeared. One time it just laid scattered on the floor with no way of being picked up. Meanwhile we made identical one on the multiplayer server and it worked fine so i just don't know anymore. Double checked for gaps etc each time.  
 

Make sure each firewood pile is a full stack(32 pieces); if a pile is incomplete, it leaves an air gap and the firewood will burn to ash rather than turn into charcoal. Also make sure that you're covering the pit with something airtight and non-flammable immediately after lighting it, such as a dirt block or solid iron trapdoor.

The other thing to check is mods; if you're using them, it's possible that one is interfering with the mechanic somehow. Make sure all mods are up to date for your game version, especially if you're playing 1.22. Older mods do sometimes work on newer versions, but 1.22 had some alterations to the code that broke a lot of older mods. Otherwise, disable your mods and verify that vanilla works correctly, then re-enable your mods one by one and test each as you do so--it'll be quite clear which one is the problem.

If you can't verify that vanilla is working correctly, then I recommend backing up your saves and mods as needed before reinstalling the game.