Air conditioning is an essential feature in modern cars (stock image) (Image: Getty)
Getting into the car in the middle of a heatwave can be an uncomfortable experience. The windows surrounding all sides of the vehicle let in sunlight, heating up the inside while hot air is trapped inside, effectively turning it into a mini greenhouse. Thankfully, most modern cars have air conditioning, so you only have to suffer for a few minutes until it cools down, and then you won’t want to leave.
But what’s the best way to cool your car down as quickly and efficiently as possible? It turns out the answer lies in a button with a mysterious symbol on it.
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One man who regularly provides helpful information about cars on social media explained more. The man, who has 128,000 followers on TikTok, where he is known as Capturing Cars, said: “99 per cent of people use this button all wrong, and maybe you’re one of them.”
Pointing to the button, which features an outline of a car, with an arrow curving back on itself inside, he continued: “What does the button itself actually do? So, it is a recirculation button – essentially, it shuts off the vents to the outside of the car, trapping the air that’s in it.”
He continued it is best used when it is either very hot, or very cold. Explaining how to use the system in combination with your car’s air conditioning to cool down he said: “What you will want to do is press this button. That will then trap the air inside the car and it will get colder on each pass, or hotter if you’ve got the heating turned on, of course.
“If you don’t have it on you are bringing in boiling hot air from outside and trying to make it cold essentially, and it takes a bit longer. It will happen, it just takes a bit longer. So turning that on will accelerate the process of cooling down the car.”
Continuing, he said it is best not to press it on wet days. Explaining, he said: “Let’s say you’re in the car, you’ve got wet clothing because you’ve been caught out in the rain.
“If your car is fogging up, which let’s face it, we’ve all experienced, that is when you’ll want to turn this off. The reason being, you are trapping humidity inside the car. It can be from you breathing, it can be, say, from a wet umbrella or wet clothes, whatever it might be. But trapping humidity in is what causes fog on your screens.”
He added cars even have a feature that deactivates the recirculation button if you turn the air to blow on your windscreen to clear the fog. “The car itself is stopping you from doing it because it knows it will not work efficiently in getting rid of fog on your windscreen,” he said.
People in the comments shared other functions of the feature. One said: “Another good time to use this is if you are following an old vehicle giving off loads of smoke, or if you are driving in the country and they have recently laid manure on the fields. It stops the smell. But ideally yes to heat [or] cool your car quicker.”
Another said: “I always use recirculate. Keeps car exhaust out when I’m in traffic.”
But someone else added a word of warning. “On very long drives be careful about leaving the recirculation on too long as it can deplete oxygen in the car and make you sleepy,” they said. “Open the window every once in a while.