im not totally new to VAG cars and owned various SEAT's, but the Octavia is doing some strange stuff. when I first drive off in the morning the climatronic is running the heater fan at the mid position according to the lights on the dial. this mean I have a rather cold drft blowing round my head until the engine warms up. this behaviour is not what the other cars have done in the past. normally the fans stays low until some heat starts getting into the engine then it pics up speed.

 

ive got the system set to auto and econ mode enabled to inhibit the broken AC. there are no error codes in the clima ecu. the only other strange thing is once the interior heater is blowing hot air and the fan starts slowing down, I get a weird damper shuffling noise that starts almost the same time driven (so maybe temp related) and lasts for maybe 2-3 minutes. its almost like a damper is stuck or not moving so it repeats the move request.

16 hours ago, cypher007 said:

system set to auto and econ mode enabled to inhibit the broken AC

Well, there's your problem I think. Climate control systems require both heater and air conditioning to work for their designed function.

19 minutes ago, KenONeill said:

Well, there's your problem I think. Climate control systems require both heater and air conditioning to work for their designed function.

but this time of year does not require ac and will just waste fuel. on our old 03 seats we always ran during the winter with AC turned off on the climate control.

16 minutes ago, cypher007 said:

but this time of year does not require ac and will just waste fuel. on our old 03 seats we always ran during the winter with AC turned off on the climate control.

Which just tells me that you don't know how climate control works. It uses the AC to dry the air, rather than "just to chill it" as you clearly believe.