The rapid development of high quality silicon carbide (SiC) epitaxy and substrates has resulted in the SiC technology developing into a production process. Epitaxial growth over large areas, require increased temperature uniformity, which is better achieved with resistive heating relative to RF heating. In this work, we report on our progress in the development of resistive heating for a vertical Chemical Vapor Deposition (CVD) reactor. We have developed a usable resistive heating system for growing alpha -SiC, which requires temperatures in excess of 1500 degreesC. We have designed a He purge system to purge the vicinity of the filament with He during growth, and have been able to achieve filament lifetimes of 30 hours at 1500 degreesC. Using this system, we have grown "state of the art" alpha- SiC at 1580 degreesC and higher (1680 degreesC), with backgrounds between 6x10(14)cm(-3) to 5x10(15)cm(-3) at 1580 degreesC, p-type. We have also grown n-type device layers using nitrogen.