Air Con Comes On When I Start The Car And Dial Sent To 'windscreen'?

[wisewoman]

Hello,

As subject header but its 'set not 'sent'!. When I start my Econetic in the morning and if the dial is set to 'windscreen' the Air con light comes on by itself? I experimented on this very cold morning with engine alreayd on. If i physically turn the air con off (orange light off) and then move the dial towards the left (away fromthe windscreen symbol) and then back on to the windscreen again the Air con light comes back on by itself. Is this normal?

I dont understand why I would want air con on when it is on windscreen setting on a cold and frosty morning. Can someone explain please?

Thanks

Melissa

PS Ive had this car a few weeks and its done less than 2000 miles and I dont believe it has auto climate control - just manual (well supposedly just manual) air con on/off button.

[Stoney871]

That's the standard way the system works.

The aircon is good for denisting the windscreen as it helps to remove condensation faster.

You should routinely run your aircon once a week to keep it working properly anyway.

[wisewoman]

Ok - thanks for letting me know. I guess I have to manually rememebr to turn it off or it will devour my petrol- or will it auto turn off?

[Stoney871]

Aircon will run until you turn it off.

If you put the wheel one notch off to either side of the windscreen demist icon and turn the aircon off it shouldn't come on automatically.

[PaulE]

Mine does the same, as Clive said - It's normal.

I turn mine to Face&Windscreen, That way - It doesn't come on, but still provides heat to the windscreen when started.

I'm thinking of activating auto windscreen heating at a certain temperature, has anyone done this with success?

[Big-Ed]

If you read your cars owners manual, It mentions that if you turn to full heat & the full windscreen setting, the A/C comes on automatically.. I thought my car had a problem when I 1st got it when the A/C was coming on with the heater!..

What I do is keep it off of the full heat setting & sit it just off the full windscreen setting & that stops the A/C coming on.

[MartynS]

I'm thinking of activating auto windscreen heating at a certain temperature, has anyone done this with success?

Mine does that at the moment, anything below 5 degrees (ie whenever the frost light is on) the rear window heater and therefore door mirrors come on by themself. The windscreen also comes on at some point, but I haven't figured out the temperature for that yet. Annoyingly the lights on the switches don't come on when they do this (so the only way of telling is by the steam coming off the mirrors), and pressing the switch to turn the light on then pressing it again to turn it off doesn't actually stop the heating. In other words, if it's cold out, your heated screens/mirrors are on and drinking petrol even when they aren't needed! Very annoying, why can't cars just let the driver decide when to turn these things on? At the very least let them turn it off!

[Preee]

I turned on Auto heated screens which activates at 4C or below , the lights also came on.This was on Focus mk2.5

[Magenta]

I didn't know that the HRW came on automatically (or the windscreen heater). I must say I'm not keen on that idea, especially if the indicator lights don't come on - that's got to be a bad idea if you don't know they are on. Particularly in my case where I've recently had a run down battery because of all the short journeys that I do - I'm trying to avoid using all these battery-draining devices,especially from start up then I decide whether to put them on or not. I have even stopped using the the auto lights function to stop the headlights coming on when I start up and the 'link to lock' option on the power mirrors for battery drain reasons.