I know in the owner's manual it says to turn the air conditioning system to fresh air mode prior to turning the vehicle off to prevent various odors from accumulating in the air conditioning system. However, I live in Fort Lauderdale in South Florida and for the past few weeks, smoke from the Everglades fires have been drifting east to Fort Lauderdale and to Miami which is only 25 miles south of here. Does anyone know if I should leave the HVAC system in recycled air mode to prevent any smoke or ashes from entering the vehicle? The strange thing is that the Everglades fires usually only happen during the dry season (winter time) Usually during the summer months starting in May we get tropical downpours almost every afternoon...but past 5 years, the summers have been record breaking hot and record breaking dry!! Few years ago, more than 25% of Lake Okeechobee dried up causing brush fires to burn the plants that are usually under 20 feet of water!!! People would go there and walk half mile to one mile out on the exposed lake bed where the water use to be...some freaky stuff..
You do have a cabin filter. In your case you might want to check this more often to clean then the maintenance schedule recommends. You want to make sure to dry out our condenser for follow the manuals recommendation.
There's not much way air will freely flow through the air vents unless you park your vehicle into a head-wind. For solar-roof equipped vehicles, the car will automatically switch to fresh after 1-2 minutes in preparation of running the fan after 10+ minutes IF the solar switch is enabled.
thanks guys i really appreciate the help!! Sea breeze kicked in and is keeping the smoke to the Everglades and west coast of Florida today.
