My wife has returned to work from Maternity leave today and her car (10 year old Dacia Sandero Stepway fwiw) which has been rarely used for the last year has had a leak.
Found an inch of water in the rear, drivers side footwell and an air of being quite “damp” inside. Bit of a bigger as buying a new car wasn’t in this years budget and I can’t imagine this would be an insurance job.
My thoughts were to run an oil filled rad plus a dehumidifier in it full whack for a few days with a hope to dry it out. Not sure where it’s coming from, had a poke about when she got home, but so it was dark not too fruitfull. I presume leak is somewhere in the boot / rear light cluster and running forward as the car is very slightly nose down on the drive.
Anything else I should be trying? Not the ideal start to the week!
Ventilation, warmth and track down the leak as you suggest. Remove the carpets if you can and it's way easier.
Google the car to see if there's a common fault.
I had a similar problem with a badly done accident repair. We wet vacced out the carpets (screwfix £50). Heat blowers, ventilation, big bags of desiccant and baking soda all helped but in the end the smell remained. I was a royal PITA with my insurance company and they eventually paid out on it. Good luck.
we often put our dehumidifier in the van to take the damp out, makes a big difference, We have a dessicant dehumidifier so it works without the van being warm, really good bit of kit that gets used loads . Its a Meaco junior that gets mentioned a lot on here
It will have saturated the sound deadening under the carpets and wicked it’s way everywhere so unless you strip out the carpets/sound deadening and find the leak and fit new seal/bung it up with silicone your on to a losing battle , rear light cluster/high level brake light/rear wiper seal all places to start
You probably aren’t the first person with a leak on that model. I remember having a weird leak (on different car) and thinking I was just unlucky - eventually went to the garage who diagnosed it in a few minutes. So google and you’ll likely find the problem and solution (mine was leaves blocking a drain which might fit for a car that’s been little used).
in terms of drying it - old towels then blue roll of similar to get as much liquid out as possible. We then just used those trays of powder desiccant and the heater on full whenever we were in it and sorted it in a few weeks. A dehummer might do it quicker but you’ll need to get power in - and that might mean cracking open a window which would be counter productive. Beware some dehummers really don’t like the cold (as in catch fire!) but if there’s no frost you will probably be fine.
Had similar when the side rail on our berlingo leaked.
Even when the carpet seemed dry for a number of days in high heat.... The car would still be humid.
As above to get it dry I had to strip the interior and pull the carpet + leave it in the sun.
It really was saturated under there.And I didn't have inches of water. I can only imagine how wet yours is.
On the plus side. They don't have much sound deadening so won't take long to dry once it gets some air.
This time of year, water doesn't want to go to vapour, and cheap condensing dehumidifiers aren't very effective, too cold for either so adding some heat is pretty much essential for that sort of approach. It's tempting to halfass it with dehumidifiers but that could end up just being wasted money.
Carpets depends mostly on how much of a pain in the arse it is to get the carpets out, but especially if there's foam/sound deadening under them, it can take bloody ages to get the last water out from under if you don't. But even just getting a load of old towels and changing them often will help wick it out. It's definitely <best> to get the carpets out but I didn't last time. Those dessicant bags or cat litter (IN A BAG, don't do like a colleague did and just pour it on the floor) do help but they're very slow.
Stating the obvious probably but there's no point trying to get it really dry when it's still leaking, got to find the source. But it's not pointless to at least get it dryer, that'll help reduce the risk of mould etc.
A wet/dry vaccuum is just massively useful. Not a little pissant one, though, you need a shop vac style one to really pull water out of fabrics and they're quite bulky, but if you've got storage space spare you'll never regret having one tucked away I reckon.
If you don't already own wet and dry hoovers, heaters and desiccant dehumidifiers, and also don't intend on regualrly flooding your car it might be worth having a phone round a few valeters and see if they'd do it.
From my experience a wet and dry hoover and a couple of nights with a dehumidifier did the trick (VW / SEAT door linings aren't fitted with proper glue and start to channel water from the window seals into the rear footwell. Easy enough fix with a bit of research and a roll of butyl tape
Stating the obvious probably but there’s no point trying to get it really dry when it’s still leaking,
other than it might help identify where the leak is. In the rear footwell you'd suspect the doors (either the seals around the doors or the membrane inside the door that should stop water running down the window glass passing into the car. At the very simplest - there are little drain holes along the bottom edge of the door - if these are gummed up the bottom of the door fills up until it leaks into the car - thats a super easy fix - In our case we had water in the rear footwell but I was coming from the front door
TG had a test sandero with a similar damp issue... I see yours is a much older model but still
Dacia Sandero - long term review - Report No:6 2024 | Top Gear
I discovered that the Aircon drain had disconnected and was filling the foot wells of the car.
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Was impossible to dry without removing the carpets, must have been nearly 20l of water in there. Hung up the carpet/noise deafening material in the shed for 2 weeks in summer and fixed the drain.
Will also allow you to see what's rusted or not in there.
My experience is you don’t need to take the carpets completely out, but you do need to lift at least one end and prop them up so you can get airflow both sides, then let a good dehumidifier do it’s thing. And fixing the source too.
Oh blimey!
Not sure if our issue is the Air con drain - our car doesn't have air con and the cars' barely done 300 miles this last year. Front windscreen scuttle being blocked was my first thought too, but the front seat footwell is dry. Also looked at door seals and they all seem intact and the door drains are empty. One of the faults is these blocking and water backing up to come out of the door speakers, but the pocket underneath the speaker grille is dry.
I'll have a poke about in the daylight tomorrow to see what I can find.
Just thinking - the damp is going to cause havoc with the electrics too, isn't it?
My van got loads of water appear. Turned out to be a missing plug in tje roof where you can attach a roof rack
cheap condensing dehumidifiers aren’t very effective, too cold for either so adding some heat is pretty much essential for that sort of approach. It’s tempting to halfass it with dehumidifiers but that could end up just being wasted money.
Maeco. Dessicant type Humdifier.
Gets reccomended on here about once a week for just about any household topic, bought ours about 4 years ago. Brilliant. Still avaialble well under £200, often less.
Have dried cars out with it after wet vaccing the interior. No heat needed, as per @Vader above.
Pesky.
Check for recalls. I had an MB that had a damp boot. Seems that for about 2 years it had been the subject of a service/remediation advisory that hadn’t been picked up despite the regular services. Eventually fixed for free.
A bit extreme but this is one method using rice,
A bit extreme but this is one method using rice,
>
Brilliant - I'll just pop to Tesco to buy 20m^3 of basmati
Might be a common issue?
https://www.daciaforum.co.uk/threads/sandero-scuttle-exposed-how-the-footwells-flood.30042/
Just get busy with a torch. Possibly get someone spraying the car.
Had a leak on a second hand Aygo we bought for the kids. Known to leak round boot seal, high level brake light, rear lights, bump stops and the vents behind the bumper. Literally checked all of them, siliconed or replaced seals and got it sorted.
My car suddenly started leaking a few years back, just the boot floor. Turned out water was tracking round the inner edges of the boot seal. Cleaned and siliconed it. Sorted.
Lights, door seals are main culprits. Check doors are shutting properly and tops of doors not leaving small gaps.
Talc can help trace leaks if puffed onto suspected areas.
snotrag
Full MemberMaeco. Dessicant type Humdifier.
Yep, but expensive. Most cheap dehumidifiers are condensers
My Berlingo had a leak, as I didn't care too much about it (not enough to strip the entire interior to lift the carpet out whole) so just ran a Stanley knife arround the footwell in as hidden a way as I could. The foam under the carpet was almost 2" thick so there was no way it was going to dry out naturally.
My solution was to just take the sodden carpet out when the water level in the foam reached the carpet. It was just a couple of times each winter. It was only a practical car so I didn't really mind. Obviously most people might want to do something more professional.
A dehumidifier might have solved it, albeit slowly. I've got one of those Meaco Juniors, it did a good job drying out our summer house, although it's gone back under warranty.
I had a similar issue on my Octavia, about two centimetres of water in the o/side passenger footwell, after literally baling it out, then using old towels to mop up as much as possible, and driving with the heating up as much as possibly. Turns out it was the slide/lift sunroof, which had a mind of its own. I pulled the fuse, then caulked it with silicone outdoor sealant. Once I sorted the ingress, it dried out pretty quickly.
Just don't do what a mate of mine did many years ago.
He thought it would be a great diagnostic tip to add a dye to the water he doused the outside with...
The interior looked like a really bad tie die effort afterwards. Unlike the water, that wasn't dye want coming out, either! Lol
