I did a search, but couldn't find anything on the subject. :(

When I open the car door, water starts dribbling out from the bottom of the door. It comes from near the front of the door and leaves a puddle on the ground. It happens more when it is raining (so quite a lot recently )

In a few months it can drop to -40°C here, so am quite keen to not have any water inside the door :eek:

Anyone had similar problem?

Yep! Mine does it especially after parking facing down the slope of my drive

In particular the rear doors pi$$ out loads of water when you open the door.

Thanks Eccles. So it's a "normal" thing then?

This is normal as far as i am aware. It happens on my drivers door all the time. I believe it is due to rain getting into the door space from the window seal at the base of the glass. If this is the case you should be OK when the temps drop to -40 as it will not be raining at these temps but snow instead. Any water that collects as snow/ice melts as you drive will then be emptied from the door as you open it to get out (although it may mean that you have to open all 4 doors to make sure all empty!!!).

This is normal as far as i am aware. It happens on my drivers door all the time. I believe it is due to rain getting into the door space from the window seal at the base of the glass. If this is the case you should be OK when the temps drop to -40 as it will not be raining at these temps but snow instead. Any water that collects as snow/ice melts as you drive will then be emptied from the door as you open it to get out (although it may mean that you have to open all 4 doors to make sure all empty!!!).

Yup, of course no rain at such low temperatures. We never get snow at those temperatures either.

I should explain a little more.

1. It is quite possible for the temperature to be just below freezing during an afternoon and it to rain, and as soon as it gets dark (perhaps 2.30-3.00pm), the temperature drops rapidly to real brass monkey weather. As water freezes, it expands, so my concern is that it may cause damage inside the door. (In the olden days here, before they had modern cutting equipment, they used to use granite blocks for house foundations. The usual way of breaking large granite blocks was to drill a line of holes in the block, fill them with water and put wooden pegs to hold the water in. Then wait for winter. The water froze, expanded and cracked the block)

or

2. It could be perhaps -5 and it snow buckets during the day, covering the car to the point you don't know it's yours . At work all our car park spaces have a pole with a box on top, inside the box is a normal electric socket, into which you plug the cable for your engine block heater. Inside the passenger footwell everyone also has another socket, and into this you plug your interior car heater (a bit like those fan heaters old ladies have over there in England ). Anyway this interior heater has a timer and comes on 2 hours before you leave work, thus warming all the windows and melting the sheet ice or snow that may be frozen to them. This could then easily seep into the doors I guess.

Sorry for the lengthy explanation about our harsh climate, but I thought I should just point out that maybe things might not be ok in really low temperatures

Don't worry about (1) - the doors are not a " sealed" system so when the water freezes it'll simply expand inside the door cavity and wont break it apart as it is not constrained.

Also I wouldn't worry about (2) either as I doubt whether there would be a significant volume of water to bother about and cause problems.

Two days after I got my vRS I opened the drivers door after a very rainy night and saw water "leaking" from exactly the same place - more or less the middle of the open door onto the road.

Scared me too as I assumed water was getting where it shouldn't do - but after your post I'm happy it is supposed to be that way now.

Yep, I've just got a new Octavia this week and mine does it too. My previous car, a Seat Altea (another VW group car) did exactly the same thing, so I wouldn't worry. Seems 'normal'.

All cars will leak into the inner cavity of the door when it rains and they have holes in the base of the door to allow this water to escape - all that you are experiencing is the water pooling inside due to the positioning of the drain holes and the camber/slopes of the road. This then drains out when you open the door and the reltive position of the holes to the pooling changes.

Perfectly normal (you should see an MX5 - the rear of the roof drains to two "cups" in the rear parcel shelf inside the car and then out through a tube to the rear wheelarch whilst the front header rail drains to a rubber cup at the top of the A-pillar and then down through the doorseal and onto the door sill).

Cheers for the replies guys

No worries, the same happens with my vRS, wife's TDI and also with the previous MPI

i had this problem then the water would build up and leak into the car. what i did was i gently took to door seal off and then put it back on carefully making sure it fitted correctly to the door and when it shut it actually created a seal. i have a feeling when they are put on in the factory that they dont actually check it. Since ive done this i havent had any leaking door and the water in the area you have mentioned has been virtually nothing.