Electric fireplaces don’t contain a real fire and so there are no real flames.

This means that an electric fireplace doesn’t produce any byproducts and so they don’t need to be vented.

Both the heat and flames and generated artificially. We’ve shown exactly how an electric fireplace works in another one of our articles, but in summary:

• The flames are typically produced by reflecting light off a set of rotating mirrors onto the front screen of the fireplace. The mirrors are angled and placed in such a way that the reflected light resembles the look of flickering flames.
• The flames effects don’t produce any heat and so supplementary heat is typically provided by a form of space heater integrated into the fireplace, such as a fan forced heater or an infrared heater.

As a result, when it comes to cleaning an electric fireplace the cleaning requirements can be far less onerous than that of a fireplace that burns firewood as it’s source of fuel.

The benefits of using an electric fireplace over other types of fireplace that burn solid fuels, in terms of cleaning and maintenance include:

• No time required setting up an electric fireplace for a fire. When plugged in to an electrical outlet, an electric fireplace is able to produce flames and heat at the switch of a button.
• No ongoing maintenance. An electric fireplace will continue to work at 100% capacity as long as there is an ongoing electrical supply.
• No vent required. Electric fireplaces don’t products any smoke or harmful gases and so don’t need a chimney or flue in order to be used.
• No cleaning required between fires. As there’s no solid fuel being burnt there’s no mess to clean up between fires such as ash or burnt pieces of firewood.