Warwick xl heating ducts

no probs, i can see the issues and sympathise with owners...
as you said, this is something that AS should have designed in, not tacked on afterwards...
either way, have a good season....
BB

Hello All,

My Warwick XL is just the same. Toasty warm in the lounge, like a sauna in the shower and Ice Station Zebra the closer you get to the cab.

I had my habitation check this week at the AS service centre plus a few warranty niggles to fix. I forwarded a few screenshots from this post to give them a better understanding of the problems encountered by owners.

Mark was his usual helpful self and got the team looking into the heat distribution issue. Here’s what they found / changed.

1. Yes, it’s a poor design and compromised by the route the ducting takes to the front of the vehicle.
2. Production line staff aren’t really thinking it through when hooking up the ducts to the Combi 6 outlets.
3. The super hot shower outlet was connected to one of the hotter top outlets - plus a relatively short run = hotter than the sun!
4. They swooped this with the asthmatic front outlet that had been connected to a lower (not as hot) heater outlet but had the longest run. Immediate improvement in both areas.
5. The other lower (cooler) heater outlet went to the nearest under bench seat outlet. This required a new corrugated hose as they need to be a min of 500mm. This meant they had to form it into a roller coaster type loop to lose the extra length. Doesn’t affect access to the boiler drain tap etc.
6. The other top (hot) outlet now goes the the furthest bench seat outlet as it will lose some heat on its travels. In summary, all the pipes were in the wrong choice of outlets!
7. They then rebalanced the three outlets with butterfly openings.

Result? For the first time I can actually feel a hot (ish) breeze coming out of the front outlet. Previously it was hard to tell if it was working even on high fan speed.

I’ll field test it (literally) in a couple of weeks when we go to France.

The service department have logged the details in case other owners want to book the same repair through their own AS dealer.

Thank you Mark & team - fingers crossed that it’s more usable now

good post Howie,but one essential thing is for Mark to go back to design/build tem and get them to make changes so that compromised design, poor workmanship,and workarounds aren't needed in future.

any IT support 'bloke' will tell you that, as well as implementing a workaround to get over a known issue, you need to prevent more occurrences of the issue returning....

yes, it's great if the workshop can provide a quick fix but even better if vans coming out of the factory were right first time....

I've recently bought a Kampa Diddy heater, which I plug into the socket by the sliding door, sits on the cooker and warms the cab mornings and evenings.. Very pleased with it [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]

HEATER DUCT ON WARWICK XL I moved pipe work around shorting front pipe and putting it onto top rear duct and the shower room onto lower duct I didn't find a great improvement I is a little warmer did this job about 8 weeks ago

Reading all the comments on this subject I am amazed that AS expect that buyers are to sort out this problem themselves. I too have the same problem; in a minus 6 snowstorm in March the air from the front vent was at a lower temperature than the ambient temp in the van! 
I taped over the front vent--better no air than cold air! I phoned AS customer service and was told to put the front duct to the TOP of the fan. Why I should have to do this I don't know. I will ask the dealer to do it as warranty item at the first service.

RABBIT18 wrote:HEATER DUCT ON WARWICK XL I moved pipe work around shorting front pipe and putting it onto top rear duct and the shower room onto lower duct I didn't find a great improvement I is a little warmer did this job about 8 weeks ago

I must say, I had never before heard that the top ducts in a Combi blew out air at different temperatures and I've read many, many manuals and threads on the subject....I reckon there's an AS leg pull going on here..

It will make no difference at all.  Ours were changed and made no difference

Poor design simple as that. The back vents heat the van anyway.  We end up too hot most of the time :)