Removing water from footwell of car

August 22, 2024 10:17 AM

My mother-in-law drove her 2022 Honda Fit through an unexpectedly deep puddle and wound up with a puddle in the driver's side footwell. I told her I'll hit it with the shop vac and use Damp Rid. Is this, plus keeping the windows open and leaving the car to air out when it's parked (and runing the a/c when she's driving) sufficient?

Separately, what are the likely reasons this happened in the first place? Since the water is not draining, it must have come from a spot higher than the current high point of the water. Since there does appear to be water anywhere else in the car, my assumption is the driver's side door seal is the issue. Anything else I should look at?

posted by robverb to Home & Garden (11 answers total)

I've got a Honda Jazz, which I think is the UK name for the Fit. Can't speak to the source of the leak, but I have had damp inside before, and was advised to get lots of cat litter, put it in a pair of tights, and put it in the footwell to help dry it out. Means driving around with something that looks like a dead snake in your footwell, but it seemed to work pretty well :)

(I never worked out where the leak came from, but it doesn't seem to have been a regular problem since then).
posted by penguin pie at 10:25 AM on August 22 [5 favorites]

If you have mobile car wash services in your area (or detailing shops), they have high-powered extractors that'll get all the wet stuff much much drier from the start. It shouldn't be terribly expensive.
posted by Lyn Never at 10:31 AM on August 22 [3 favorites]

Well I have a 2013 Fit and our garage was flooded a couple of years ago, so I got water inside throughout. Yes, those doors seals are not waterproof when it comes to flooding/standing water/etc. What we did to solve the problem (the other car was my husband's Insight; also flooded):
-- First go to a car wash and pay for the highest-level detailing. So they used their high-power vacuum to suck up as much water as they could. At the end of this, the car was clean -- no more mud, dirt, debris, etc. -- but still very wet.
-- Run the fan or AC or heat at full blast whenever driving, also with windows fully down whenever possible. Basically keep air circulating as much as possible.
-- Park with the windows fully down whenever possible.

Honestly, I thought my Fit would be totalled in this disaster, but it wasn't. The steps above actually did mitigate the situation and I'm still driving the same car.
posted by BlahLaLa at 10:48 AM on August 22 [1 favorite]

I have a much older Fit, but I know there have been some leak problems. Are you all sure it was from driving through the puddle? I am asking because, if it's an on-going leak, the issue might require more than just drying out the footwell. And, if there was a huge puddle, it was probably also raining a lot around that same time, so could the water have come in elsewhere and collected in the footwell?

Might be worth googling leaks and the car year and model. (My passenger floor wells accumulate water and I am still trying to figure out the source of water entry.)
posted by bluedaisy at 10:55 AM on August 22

Don’t most cars including Hondas have little rubber drainage plugs underneath the mats and carpeting at low points in the interiors?
posted by jamjam at 11:52 AM on August 22 [1 favorite]

I had a five-gallon glass carboy, full of water, shatter in the backseat of my Prius when I hit a bump. I brought it to a local car detailing place and they quoted me around $800.

So I took the thing apart. First the carpets, then the molding, then the flooring. It was pretty intuitive. And I parked it in my sloped driveway so that the water would collect in one area. I used a wet vac to remove it, then toweled up the remaining water. Then I left the car, all windows open, in the driveway for at least three days. I attached a couple of small fans, as well, and had them blowing air into the cabin constantly. And I dried the mats in the sun for about as long.

It took a while, but I got all the water and there's been no problem with mold.

Which is to say: you can do this.
posted by Dr. Wu at 11:55 AM on August 22 [1 favorite]

In similar situations, I've left the car idling, using not much gas, and turned fans on high, on slightly warm. Leave it for a few hours. And do cheap clay cat litter.
posted by theora55 at 1:43 PM on August 22

Response by poster: Thanks everyone. Great advice and suggesstions.
posted by robverb at 3:00 PM on August 22

You could also buy huge buckets of desiccant at the hardware store pretty cheaply.
posted by creiszhanson at 7:32 PM on August 22

Is the car parkable somewhere you can run a portable pro dehumidifier? It'll need to be plugged in, so ensuring people neither trip over it nor take it. But that's the tool for the job.
posted by cocoagirl at 3:33 AM on August 23

Best answer: Run the fan or AC or heat at full blast whenever driving

Better still, run the heater and AC at the same time, with the vent controls set to put the hot air into the footwells. If this makes the interior too hot, control the temperature by opening the driver's window some.

In all cars I'm aware of, the air conditioner evaporator core is upstream of the heater core, which means that running them both does exactly the same work as a plug-in dehumidifier: the evaporator cools the incoming air and makes water condense out of it, then the heater core warms the resulting cold, dry air into into hot, dry air that's really good at pulling moisture out of things.

If you doubt this, or can't see how or why it would work, try running the heater and AC at the same time with the vent controls set on demist the next time your windscreen is fogged on the inside. I expect you'll be impressed by how much faster your screen clears than when using the heater alone, even though the air you'll feel coming out of the vents won't be quite as hot.
posted by flabdablet at 5:04 AM on August 23