Excess heat from drivers side footwell

[marleymilo]

Hi all, just recently noticed when driving that that there is a lot of heat coming from drivers side footwell inside the car, also seems to be a slight burning plastic type of smell, have looked around but can't see anything unusual visually??????
Any thoughts??

[Thecastle]

Most likely your heater control valve has failed open, I noticed heat coming out of the foot well when mine did. With the ac on.

[Ellie13]

did you ever discover/confirm this issue? Our 2013 X5 35i is having a similar problem - regardless of the temperature controls / max ac setting / auto setting - we will occasionally get VERY hot air blowing out of one side of the rear passenger vents. We cannot determine the cause as it is intermittent and never seems to be one side or the other. Sometimes it blows ice cold AC on the driver side rear, while also blowing blazing hot out of the passenger side rear (or vice versa)

One time we even noticed the VERY HOT air blowing only in the driver side footwell, while all other vents (Dashboard: left, center, right and Rear passenger both sides) still blowing cold.

It feels like we are just randomly get this where we turn on the AC and when the car gets up to temp we will just have 1 or 2 random vents start blowing super hot.

We have taken it to a local mechanic that specializes in BMW, and he said that they scanned it, there are no codes or faults, but he also mentioned that they could not replicate the issue, even when the car got up to temp. He said it COULD be the blend door actuator but he was not sure.

P.S. - I think we only have the "2 zone" climate control as there is not any controls for the rear 2nd row passengers.

Any input would be appreciated!

Thanks

[Ellie13]

Update: FIXED the Heat/AC issue,

We first tried topping off the refrigerant for the AC system since it was a little bit low. This made the ac colder, but we still had the issue with hot air blowing our of some vents.
I decided to try to replace the heater control valve - as many others do this when they have heat / AC issues.
For us it fixed the issue! No more random heat blowing through vents. I think over time (10 years and about 96K miles in our case) the rubber seals in the control valves just wear out and stop making a seal for the heating loop.

We choose to go with the genuine BMW part from FCP Euro ... I believe its SKU# 64116910544 which was about $200

I have also heard that the Bosch brand version of this part is good quality, but I would avoid going with other off-brands as ive read about other cheaper versions failing prematurely.

The only "special" tool I needed to complete this job was a set of "plastic hose clamp pliers" to gently clamp shut the 3 coolant hoses that connect to the heater control valve.
I bought a set of "6 pack hose clamp pliers" from Amazon for about $14 and these helped tremendously. If you dont use these hose clamps you WILL spill a ton of coolant everywhere once you disconnect the old heater control valve. Also may be a good idea to put a catch pan under the car to capture any small coolant spills while you do this part swap.

Once swapped, just make sure you top off your coolant reservoir once you have a chance to get the car up to temp and cycle the heat/ac a few times.

I hope this all helps!
M