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Swap Old LPG Gas Heater for a New Electric Heater (Free of Charge, 1800 Available) @ The Warehouse

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From June 13 to July 3, The Warehouse will run its first Healthy Heater Swap in 30 stores, where people can trade in their LPG gas heater for an electric option at no charge.

About 1800 11-fin electric heaters being made available for swapping. All indoor unflued LPG gas heaters will be accepted as part of the swap and will then be recycled.


There are five spaces per store on Thursday, Friday Saturday and Sundays.

How do I book my unflued gas heater swap?

You can book a time slot here. There are 30 stores where you can swap your unflued gas heater. If you don’t make your booked time slot, your booking will be cancelled. Please check you’ve selected the correct date and time before you book. Please click through to book at these specific The Warehouse stores. Please note, stocks are limited to 60 swaps per store.

Can I swap my heater at any The Warehouse store?

No, 30 have been selected. Click here to find your closest store

How will the swap work once I reach the store?

Bring your unflued gas heater to the Customer Service Desk with the LPG bottle removed. Please ensure that you bring your heater to the store that you booked and within the correct 30-minute time slot. If the unflued gas heater is brought in at a different time slot than what was booked, unfortunately we won’t be able to swap it. A team member will take your unflued gas heater for recycling and provide you with a new Living & Co. 11 Fin Oil heater for free.

Related Stores

The Warehouse
The Warehouse

closed Comments

  • +3

    Guessing it'll be the Living & Co 11 fin heater

  • +2

    Link updated.

  • +4

    What an awesome initiative, get those filthy gas heaters out of homes for people that can't afford to do it. Well done TWH!

    • What are the cons about gas heaters (sorry for my lack of knowledge - just trying to get educated).

      • +2

        Moisture created by burning gas.
        Use of lpg.
        Potential fire risk

        • It is good to see the warehouse doing this sort of thing.
          But aren't LPG ones cheaper to run than electric conventional heaters? Heat pumps are far more efficient than conventional heaters, so people will end up paying more for heating than they would if they had a heat pump. I also recall that oil heaters also did not rank well with consumer tests.

          • +2

            @nzmax: Well your not gonna get a heatpump installed for turning in ur gas heater..

          • @nzmax: LPG is very expensive in those small bottles, so per kwh you are already better off with electricity unless you are on one of the prepay rip you off plans. Add on that you do not need ventilation as much and the loss of heat from that and you are well ahead on electric resistive heating.

      • +3

        unflued ones release pollutants incl nitrogen dioxide carbon monoxide and moisture. so you should have a window open or use it in a large area which is counter productive.
        https://www.health.govt.nz/your-health/healthy-living/enviro…

      • +1

        They're freaking horrible things.

        Burning gas actually produces moister and other gases, so you need a flued gas heater or must have ventilation with these mobile ones.

        Moisture leads to mould in homes, and you'll often see people using these to dry their washing inside etc.
        Moist air is harder to heat, so all and all they're just a crap idea.

        • Sorry, must have hit the associated button by accident

      • This deal is specifically indoor unflued LPG gas heater.

        Unlike flued gas heater, unflued gas heater dump all their combustion gasses into the living room. Generally they burn pritty clean, and the main concern is the amount of water vapor released, which makes the house damp, increases mold risk etc.

        If the heater is not working well for some reason it can put out really nasty emissions like carbon monoxide.

        If you have the heater in a poorly ventilated space, the combustion can start impacting the make up of the air. Decreasing the amount of oxygen, cranking up the amount of CO2. If the space is sealed well enough, and the heater run long enough, eventually the air will no longer be fit for human life.

        The above risk's can be managed (good ventilation, CO alarm etc), but sadly are not always. As an example an Albert Wylie of Christchurch died in July 2015 as the result of inhaling fumes from a LPG heater (in this case there was both an issue with the heater and it was used in a poorly ventilated area).

        And of course, the common cabinet style unflued gas heater have a viable open flame, so present a fire risk.

        And, here is the kicker. The common 9kg BBQ bottle Lpg cabinet heater are not even cheap to run. 9kg bottle swap at buntings cost's $34, and contains 123kWh of energy. At 95% efficiency this works out to 29c/kWh. (excluding the cost & time of going to do the bottle swap, and not accounting for the heat removed from the room by the gas bottle cooling as the lpg is consumed, and not counting the loss of dregs of gas that it is not viable to consume).

        For comparison, the kWh component of power with frank energy is 18.98c on a standard user plan, and 25.99c/kWh on a Low user plan.

        Why would anybody want to deal with a bulky, fume producing heater, that presents a risk of fire, and that request travel to swap / fill the bottle, when it is actually cheaper to just run the comparable amount of cheap plug in electric heater's.

        (gas heaters are often about 4.2kW, so it might take two plug in heaters to get a similar output, and these may need to be on different circuits if one has 16A circuit breakers like me).

        Main advantage of the gas cabinet heaters is they don't need power. So they work in a power cut etc.

        Note that none of this applies to flued gas heater's which put their fumes outside, and if running on natural gas are pritty cheap to run.

    • +4

      I would keep one of these LPG heaters as backup in case of an extended power cut. I wouldn't want to freeze like those Texans last year when they lost power.

      • I remember that carbon monoxide was the main cause of death rather than hyperthermia.

        In any case, I can't imagine something like that happening in urban New Zealand

        • +1

          They couldn't imagine it in urban Texas either…

        • Carbon monoxide risk can be mitigated with adequate ventilation and a CO alarm. Heat is critical if you have the elderly in the home, as pneumonia could kill them.

          Those Texans didn't prepare because like you, they couldn't imagine something like that happening to them.

        • remember cars kill people

        • Auckland 1998 power crisis: 5 week outage.

          Good thing is that much of NZ is warm enough that we are not going to have hypothermia deaths in a power cut. Just wear some warm clothes when you are in bed…

          With regards to carbon monoxide deaths in Texas, most are caused by people doing stupid things, because the don't know better.

          I suspect a lot were due to people running car's or generators inside.

          An indoor gas heater is safe to use inside as long as the guidelines around it being in good condition and the room being large and ventilated are followed.

      • +1

        This is basically the only good remaining use case for such heaters. Obviously need to manage the fume risk via ventilation and perhaps a CO alarm.

        Personally I live in Auckland, and the temp very rarely dips below zero (and we have very little storage space, but do have a BBQ, and portable gas ring to cook with), so we would just make a call between riding out such an event, and jumping in the car to stay with family 220km away.

        • Yeah the operating economics of these LPG heaters is just poor, a $10 fan heater will give you more heat (no heat loss with ventilation) faster at a cheaper price, and no need to carry heavy LPG bottles around trying to swap or refill it.

          • @Avantime: Might need two of those fan heater's… The gas cabinet heater I looked up is 4.2kW.

            But yeah, a pair of $17 bunnings 2000W fan heaters, will do basically the same job, with lower running costs, and no need to deal with combustion gasses via ventilation, of having the gas bottle filled.

            That said If i lived somewhere rural and cold (and didn't have a wood burner like most such homes), I would probiably have one of the LPG heaters tucked away for power cuts. Not really required in Auckland.

        • This is why a woodburner for heating can be a good idea in combination with a heat pump. Plus a wood burner creates a nice cosy environment. New wood burners are quite efficient, and ULEBs even more so, and you can get more heat out of a wood burner than you can out of a normal electric heater, so good for large spaces.

      • +1

        They are still good to use in a shed or garage when you have a door open for venting..

    • -1

      It is a great initiative, but for many I'm sure the reason for them using a gas heater is for its relatively low running costs. Electric heaters are expensive to run.

      • People might regret, not sure whether that oil heater is able to produce the same heat output.

      • It’s not the same gas/rate as what pumped into your house on a street connection.

        Operating efficiency of gas bottles isn't very good.

      • If you get a 9kg gas bottle (123kWh of energy) swapped at bunnings at $34, it works out to $0.276 per kWh.

        Many peoples power is cheaper or similar to that. (espeically if you also consider transport costs to do the bottle swap, and heat losses due to the need for ventilation when the heater is used)

        • You can get 9kg bottle refilled cheaper than that though, depending on where you live. $24 at some places, which makes it quite a bit cheaper to run. WE used to fill ours when getting petrol. Power in my area is between 35 -40c per kWh. It is higher because rural. Piped gas heater will be a lot cheaper to run than electricity, and unflued ones are just as much of an issue with condensation. .

        • When my gas heater was used, it was to heat up a large hallway plus living room quickly. An electric heater can't produce the same output so it needs to run longer. But by leaving it on longer, more heat is lost due to a greater length of time and since a larger part of the heat created is used to maintain the current temperature.

  • +2

    A lpg heater in good condition is worth more than the $69 electric heater.

    • i have seen a few around and was wondering if its worth the hassle but i wouldn't use it due to the cost to run it.

    • Yes. A good one is north of $300 new. (if you can still find one in stock)

      https://www.100percent.co.nz/Product/SRI2/Delonghi-Gas-Heate…

      That said, these kind of swap deals, will largely attract cheap and poor condition stuff.

      I don't imagine there is much of a used market for them, given the current cost of 9kg gas swap bottles. Basically the only remaining logical use case is as back up heating for a power cut's (might be justified somewhere rural and cold).

      And of course it is a bit easier to turn up to the warehouse and swap, than it is to list online and wait for a buyer if you are looking to move from gas to electric.

      • Garage or workshops when a door is open.

        • I spouse, if there isn't ready access to power.

          If there is ready access to power, a comparable amount of kW of electric heater's would be cheaper to run on most power plans, and avoid the safety risks to do with a naked flame.

    • Exactly, people would be better to sell them on trademe. There is a demand for them, because I sold one last year and got over $100 for it, although it was in very good condition and a good one.

  • +3

    The slots to trade in have all been booked already. They were apparently already booked as soon as the site went up.

  • +1

    I can forsee all the people that do the swap, and then plug the heaters in to the power in their crap rentals, and either pop the fuse (breakers are a dream to most rentals) or find that the fuse was swapped for a piece of speaker wire last time it blew and cook up the dangerous 1960s wiring in the crapbox house.

    I have one of these heaters to use in my garage. It is radiant heat so the whole room doesnt need to be heated, It doesnt take power from the inadequite supply to the garage so I can still use the dropsaw and compressor at the same time, and its instant heat when I go out there and start it up. A absolute bottom end oil filled radiator would be the worst thing in that situation. This is probably the warehouse trying to offload a shipment of questionable heaters so they dont have to deal with CGA claims when they fail. I do not trust the place at all to be honest.

  • This week's new bookings are up, get in quick, they won't last long.

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