JerryU

The "ventilation" you like is causing a delay in heating! Look at post #22. The air in the open mesh that is between the leather and the heating elements (in black) that is used to circulate and spread cabin air from those small fans has poor thermal conductivity.
Mine and as others have posted take about 10 minutes before we need to turn them from 3 bars to 2 or 1 bar. If you're wearing heavy paints may take a bit longer. If after 15 minutes you can leave them on 3 bars and don't feel a thing, perhaps it's a connector or fuse.
My C6 did not have cooling and was much quicker.

Tulsaeasyrider

Yes, they are pretty much useless. You get warmer from the effort of pushing the button than from any seat heating. The Seat Ventilator is great for the warmer weather, but the Seat Heater is inadequate at best.

MIGHTYM0USE

i was pretty sure my heaters were broken until i read this. not sure if that makes me feel better or not.

i also wondered if it was just my competition seats not having the same capacity of heater as in the standard seating.

iclick

I would rate the C7 seat heaters as mediocre, but I'm spoiled. The last cars I owned with seat heaters were Saabs, and the Swedes know how to make seat heaters.

JerryU

But do they have a thick layer of low thermal conductivity mesh between the heating elements and the leather to assist with cooling?? (see post #22)
Doesn't get very hot in Sweden! Been there many times, including in the summer!
My seats get hot enough in 10 minutes that I need to go from 3 bars to 2 or 1. Not happy with the delay but I think about how nice they are in the summer!

iclick

None of my Swedish cars had seat coolers (900 and 9000), but the heaters were great. They warmed fast and got much warmer than the C7's do. In my drive today the heaters became reasonably warm after about 20 min., at which time I clicked them down a notch or two. They just take a while to get there, as you pointed out.

MikeyTX

Yup ! Mine will cook yo a** right quick if left at 3 bars.

meyerweb

At 30F, it doesn't take more than 5 minutes before I'm reducing the heat to 1 bar. That's still slower than some of my other cars, but it's good enough.

C7HOORAY

I don't know why, but C7 seat heaters are sub-par....the seats in our '15 VWs (GTI and Passat)
produce noticeable heat within a minute and are HOT within 3-5 minutes of driving...Also, most women love heated seats whereas most guys are kind of indifferent about them? Right?

themonk

if it's cold enough to use the heaters then I usually pre-heat my car anyways so it's no big whoop for me that they're useless. On the flip side, the cooling feature works great.

JerryU

See post #22, good reason IMO that there is a delay in feeling the heat. That thick open mesh between the heating elements and the leather is to help circulate the air from the cooling fans in the summer! Air is a poor thermal conductor so it takes longer to feel the heat. Like a plastic pot handle vs metal!
Do your VW's have seat cooling?

op z

It's interesting to compare C6 and C7 seat heater schematics. The C6 has a 20 amp fuse and a thermistor to measure seat temperature. The thermistor provides feedback to the heater control circuit to keep from overheating your posterior. The C7 has a 15 amp fuse and no thermistor. The lower fuse rating implies the seat heaters have a lower wattage rating and the lack of a thermistor means the heating remains constant for a given setting. With no feedback in the C7 circuit, it can't varying the heater output. This result in lower heat output for a given setting since the temperature is not reduced by the feed circuit.