brand new car - passenger side footwell carpet has become soaked with water

Inigo_Montoya

My mother bought a brand new Kadjar from Renault just under a month ago 

She has just discovered that the carpet in the passenger side footwell has become soaked with water

She is taking the car into the dealer today to be looked at

Does anybody have any advice as to how to handle this situation ?

We are concerned that even if the leak is found and repaired that the carpet will not be dried out properly and will go moldy in time
&/or cause the car floor to rust

From a youtube video I have looked it appears at the carpet can only be dried out if it is removed & let to air until dry
- if you do not remove the carpet then there will likely be water permanently trapped in the insulation layer under the carpet
which will obviously eventually cause mold & rust 

Thrugelmir

Sounds like you are making issues and concerning your mother when none should exist. Once the matter is dealt with properly. 

Grumpy_chap

Is it a leak, or could something have been left slightly ajar?  With the current weather, a very slight not closed window would allow a lot of water in.

motorguy

Typically a dealership will, as part of the repair, remove the carpet and dry it out thoroughly.

Ant555

If the leak is found and fixed then the carpet can almost certainly be dried out with no longer term issues.

I have had 2 x leaks in my driving history causing a swimming pool in the car - one was a faulty heater/aircon unit that soaked both footwells and one was a leaky door seal on an old MX5.   Once the leaks resolved, I blasted the heater into the footwells at every opportunity and also kept the window open slightly when driving and when parked on my drive during the day for a while.  No mould or musty smells lingered, no removal of carpet.

step 1 is to let the dealers find and fix the leak (which it sounds like you have already started)

hope this helps

Sandtree

We had multiple leaks with our VW from different places. In terms of mould, rust etc there were no problems at all... once the leak was stopped everything was dried out properly etc and all looked as good as new/better than it was before.

In our case there was a reasonable amount of damage caused to the electrics with two of the leaks but that was immediately evident and was fixed at the time.

Keep_pedalling

I suspect the source of the water is from a disconnected aircon condensation drainage pipe which is located in the passenger footwell. The carpet will need to come out to see if this is the case and fix it if it is. 

She needs to insist that the carpets are bone dry before they give her the car back.

angrycrow

Are we actually talking soaked carpets or just damp. The last one I dried out was a cabriolet with a leaky roof. After removing the carpets there was still 7 litres of water sat in the floor pan. I suspect there was about the same volume soaked into the carpet. After 5 days of leaving the carpet in the sun during the day and storing it inside at night it was completely dry and no problems with mould since. That's what I would class as soaked carpets. The key is to get it really dry before putting it back in. A dehumidifier speeds things up.

It is unlikely this car is that bad and it could just be a damp carpet, running a dehumidifier in the car would dry it out quickly with no lasting issues once the leak is found and fixed. 

Inigo_Montoya

angrycrow said:

Are we actually talking soaked carpets or just damp. The last one I dried out was a cabriolet with a leaky roof. After removing the carpets there was still 7 litres of water sat in the floor pan. I suspect there was about the same volume soaked into the carpet. After 5 days of leaving the carpet in the sun during the day and storing it inside at night it was completely dry and no problems with mould since. That's what I would class as soaked carpets. The key is to get it really dry before putting it back in. A dehumidifier speeds things up.

It is unlikely this car is that bad and it could just be a damp carpet, running a dehumidifier in the car would dry it out quickly with no lasting issues once the leak is found and fixed. 

as far as I can tell it is soaked through and not just damp e.g push a finger into the carpet & you can see the water logging

water has not started pooling above the carpet so far

we have now visited Renault & the service manager was very non committal about removing the carpet to dry it out - he seemed to imply that the carpet would not be removed if the water was only in the carpet pile above the "wax layer" - we are not happy with this so will be writing a letter saying we want the carpet removed and dried out properly

I had a similar experience myself in an Astra car I previously owned around 25 years ago when IIRC a small heat exchanger near the gear stick that heats the cabin air started leaking coolant  & the carpet & floor pan  got completely water logged with engine coolant

Grey_Critic

Does the car have Global Open/Close windows?

Back in the 1990s the Ford Galaxy did and we had several cases where the footwell had water in it, the problem was that there was an ECU under the passenger (left hand) seat and the water got into that.

It was caused by the vehicle reacting to a rogue signal that opened the windows and let rain in. They would then close after a period.

In every case there had been heavy rain when that had happened often when parked in outside car parks at Manchester airport. Just a thought!

Nobbie1967

Inigo_Montoya said:

angrycrow said:

Are we actually talking soaked carpets or just damp. The last one I dried out was a cabriolet with a leaky roof. After removing the carpets there was still 7 litres of water sat in the floor pan. I suspect there was about the same volume soaked into the carpet. After 5 days of leaving the carpet in the sun during the day and storing it inside at night it was completely dry and no problems with mould since. That's what I would class as soaked carpets. The key is to get it really dry before putting it back in. A dehumidifier speeds things up.

It is unlikely this car is that bad and it could just be a damp carpet, running a dehumidifier in the car would dry it out quickly with no lasting issues once the leak is found and fixed. 

as far as I can tell it is soaked through and not just damp e.g push a finger into the carpet & you can see the water logging

water has not started pooling above the carpet so far

we have now visited Renault & the service manager was very non committal about removing the carpet to dry it out - he seemed to imply that the carpet would not be removed if the water was only in the carpet pile above the "wax layer" - we are not happy with this so will be writing a letter saying we want the carpet removed and dried out properly

I had a similar experience myself in an Astra car I previously owned around 25 years ago when IIRC a small heat exchanger near the gear stick that heats the cabin air started leaking coolant  & the carpet & floor pan  got completely water logged with engine coolant

The service manager may well be right. If the leak has come from above the carpet then it may well not go through to the backing and just need drying out from the top. I had an accident with 5 litres of oil sloshing around my footwell and it never got through to the backing.