When a family member purchased an electric fireplace to decorate the living room it was admittedly beautiful. It created ambiance with the flickering flame and a tad of heat with electric resistors. It also seemed antiquated - the notion of using “a toaster” to create heat is something we really want to avoid. It’s expensive, and with the current electric grid, it’s the most greenhouse gas intensive method of heating. This electric fireplace, coupled with a recently installed ugly heat pump, got the family thinking about how to incorporate a heat pump into a fireplace to create a system that is not only up to four times as efficient as a traditional electric fireplace, but could also cool and dehumidify. We designed and built a prototype and installed it at the Rist Institute of Sustainability and Energy at UMass Lowell. It worked great!! Now we are improving the design and fine tuning the components to include an air filtration system. We will soon be launching a beta test to make sure Clean Flame users and installers love it as much as we do!