I used to burn all of mine in a wood stove when I had one. So the fire pit should work fine. And cold will have no bearing on your being able to start a fire.....wet could :-) Ideally, you want a fire that would burn on without constant attention and so would need some wood to keep things going. But since you need to be present to keep feeding your papers into the blaze, you can skip that!

btw, you do not want to dump all the papers in at once or fill the pit. Start a small fire using just a few crumpled up papers (or some of the shreds) and then continue to feed it more to keep it going. Not something I would just put a light to and walk away from!!

Also a fire of mostly or entirely of paper will create a lot of ash - some pretty good sized - that will drift up on the heat currents and fly off. I find it is helpful to use some sort of poker to break things up as they burn to avoid much of this.

Do I have to dump some water on it when I'm done?

Not necessarily. If there is no fuel to keep it going, like wood or wood coals, once you've burnt all your papers, it should go out on its own.

I'd probably do so anyway, as an abundance of caution.

the problem with paper... is the ash will fly around.. worse according to wind ... of which today.. out my way.. there is none ...

but even if it flies around.. everything is so damp ... its not going to ignite anything ... you would NOT want to be doing this in july/august when everything is a tinder box ...

start small.. increase per how its all working out for you ... i would NOT dump a huge batch at once ...

just go out and stir the ashes an hour after you are done.. i doubt there will be anything under it ... there just isnt any density of wood.. to stay smouldering ...

ken

how did it work out?