Evening all, the cabin heaters in my 54 plate 2.0 diesel only work on full setting. The fans work properly as do the vent direction controls but the heat knob appears to do nothing until on full (when it does come on full!) If you back the knob off a little it goes back to cold. I have taken the heater controls out and everything appears to be connected properly. Also I have taken the car to a local VW/Audi/Skoda garage, they took the control unit out tested it and found nothing wrong. I bought a control unit from a scrap yard and it behaves exactly as my original unit did (full heat or no heat). An OBDII scanner shows no error codes. Any suggestions would be appreciated as full heat really is nasty.

It could be a dodgy sensor burried in the dash somewhere like mine. I had a similar problem but my heater was on full all the time regardless of what temp you had it set on. My fault was intermitent so it worked fine 90% of the time but it got rather hot on a few occasions (the heater really is good isn't it ).

I would be a happy bunny if I lived in Alaska but climate change isnt that bad in Wirral yet. A couple of minutes on full heat and your eyebrows start to slide down your face.

I feel your pain. When my car decided it wanted to cook me alive I only had on a t-shirt and it was 2^oC outside and I had all the windows open and even then it was still rather warm in the car. On another occasion it was pouring with rain and all the windows were down again so everyone must have been thinking what a tit lol

Edited 5 September, 201312 yr by Blackline Stu

Hello mate,

This may sound like a daft question, but how old is your battery? I had several niggling faults due to my battery coming to the end of its natural life. One of which was the heaters would constantly blow warm air. I tried the control flap reset trick which would work for a while but after a short time they would revert to blowing warm air.

I was also experiencing problems with starting the engine when warm. Engine would fire up briefly before cutting out with a hell of a thump.

Turns out it was the battery. Like you, I wasn't getting any fault codes. Since changing the battery it its been spot on ever since. No issues with starting or with the heating controls. It's well documented that a failing battery on an Octavia can cause all sorts of weird & wonderful faults.

Hope this helps.

FP.

Thanks for the idea Flying Pig.

I really don't know. The battery was in when I bought the car 4 years ago. It always starts straight away even if it hasn't been used for a few days.

If I turn everything on and then start the engine the headlights only dim a little. I thought this meant the battery was holding a decent charge.

I will try and get it tested at the weekend.

The Heater has motorised flaps and these can play up, happened to my 07 vRS either really hot or nothing, on occasions it would start of ok then go cold, mended under warranty. .Search on the forum for heater flaps and there may be some tips.

My battery was also fine in every sense or so it appeared. As I've said before, a failing battery or one that is getting on a bit can cause all sorts of faults on the Octavia. In the meantime give this a go.

Here's a tip I used on mine when it continued to blow hot air.

With the ignition on but the engine NOT running, hold down the ECON and the bottom left of the four oblong buttons for airflow. The display changes and then you hear all the flaps calibrating.

Basically, pressing the two buttons causes the flap to cycle through its full range of movement as they can sometimes become jammed. When it does this, you'll hear a clicking noise from behind the vents.

Hope this helps.

Sorry, I should have said earlier that the car hasn't got proper aircon just an A/C button so I cant do the flap reset people mention. I will get the battery tested today.

Just been to an auto electrician, he tested the battery and said it was fine. Thanks for the suggestion though flying pig.

You're welcome mate. I just hope you get to the bottom of it as there's nothing worse than not being able to solve a problem / fault.

Good luck.

FP.