My point was in the wonderful world of insurance and law, what is obvious is not always so. BTW if that was obvious why would they bother specifying ‘vermin, insects or pest’ if a vermin was a pest and a pest a vermin? No need to answer, just reinforcing my point about ‘semantics’ and insurance.
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Hooray!
Similar logic might also apply to gecko proof air conditioners.
Does any manufacturer promise at point of sale their products are free from risk of damage caused by pests, vermin, rodents, geckos, … or Tasmanian wildlife (devils)?
Is it a reasonable expectation ‘Fit for Purpose’ products installed in and around the home must be protect against such risks?
The ACL says
are fit for any purpose that the consumer made known to the business before buying (either expressly or by implication), or the purpose for which the business said it would be fit for
My emphasis in bold.
What the ‘business said it would be fit for’ might be in the fine print, or … subject to a test case, assuming there are none to date. That air conditioning equipment as well as the great majority of household electrical devices and appliances do not exclude geckos etc by design, may help understanding what might be a reasonable conclusion.
Consumers should be asking for better product design.
Are we all prepared to pay the higher upfront purchase cost?
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This is quite a different situation. If a retailer or manufacture claim that an air conditioner is vermin/pest/insect/water etc proof at the point of sale or in literature associated with the product, and vermin/pest/insect/water etc caused a fault by entering the unit, then the claims would be misleading under the Australian Consumer Law and restitution under the ACL would be possible.
If the manufacturer or retailer doesn’t make any such claims, one can’t assume that since such claims are not made, that it is not for for purpose when such a failure occurs.
Using the analogy outlined above, it is a similar situation to rats getting under the bonnet of a car and eating wiring/harnesses causing the vehicle to fail. While car manufacturers or their seller don’t state that a car’s engine area is rat proof, one can’t assume that it should be be the case (and the vehicle is not fit for purpose) and the car manufacturer/seller should be responsible for the rats damage.
Rats eating car wiring is well known, like geckos in air-conditioning. These are known to cause faults in vehicles/air-conditioners. One can’t assume because you didn’t take any action to prevent the fail occurring (such as controlling rates or screening one’s house), that the responsibility lies with the manufacture or retailer.
The air-conditioner would be fit for purpose, it does what it is sold to do - cool and heat air, and why should a manufacturer be held responsible for ensuring that the owner didn’t prevent the damage to the air conditioner unit by geckos getting into the house. Likewise, should a car manufacturer be held responsible when rats (which are also vermin/pests) get under the bonnet of a car and eat the wiring out. Should car manufacturers be responsible for the irresponsibility or undue care of the owner?
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The issue has been raised multiple times in this thread about the owner’s responsibility to seal off the house. To reiterate, this is a split system aircon, which means that the fan is INSIDE the house and the other part, cooling system etc, is OUTSIDE the house. So the issue is not whether the owner took all necessary precautions to seal the house. The damage was caused by geckos inside the unit that sits OUTSIDE the house. I still maintain that if one can put a man on the moon, as they say, aircon designers should be able to engineer a circuit board which still allows the required airflow but is protected by a barrier to thwart invasion by geckos. Is it possible to bring a class action suit against all manufacturers?
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It is not unique locally or to geckos. In Houston TX USA the problem is fire ants being attracted to the dual relays in the outside compressors. Once enough ants get crushed in the relay and depending on whether it is the fan or compressor relay, you either do not have cooling (compressor does not start) or the compressor fries (fan blocked, no airflow over compressor). I am not aware there has been a treatment devised excepting chemicals to kill the fire ants around the unit perimeter on a regular basis.
Back to the geckos, there is some good information in the following, even though they don’t identify the gecko resistant product ranges.
https://www.aquariusair.com/blog/2018/6/28/dealing-with-geckos
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Apologies, this information seems to have been missed in earlier posts and as most gecko damage is caused by gecko being in the indoor fan unit, it was assumed that this was the case with the fault with your unit.
If the outdoor unit allowed geckos to enter the control area causing a shorting of the circuit boards, this is an issue as it shows that the unit is not designed to withstand the elements. If a gecko can enter such an area, so can moisture/water (through rain or humidity) or dust (through wind). Water/moisture and dust any outdoor electrical circuitry should be protected from. The easiest way to protect such is for the components to be in a weather sealed unit (such as meeting as a minimum IP65 or higher).
If the components were sealed, then it would be impossible for anything else (gecko or such like) to enter the unit.
Do you know if the geckos freely entered the circuitry or did if enter by other means (such as running up electrical conduit to the control box or if they ‘ate’ their way through something).
If they used conduit to enter the control box, then the issue could be with the installer and not the manufacturer…for example, the installer didn’t take necessary measures to reseal the control box (to IP65 or higher) such as a squirt of silicone to seal of the conduit after the wires run through the conduit.
If the geckos ‘ate’ (or entered through an opening caused by another creature damaging the control box or associated areas), then this again may not necessarily be an issue with the manufacture or design and would be similar to rats eating car wiring.
Gee I’m glad I opted for portable a/c. We have those Asian Geckos here which are currently doing their job of eating up cockroaches and spiders, and making chukchukchuk noises in the middle of the night, but I think they are only in the walls. Maybe it was a gecko that stopped my bedroom window skinny a/c from working, a couple of years ago.
I have removed mummified mice from the circuit board in my outside unit. They crawl in there for warmth in the winter. I don’t see why it would be hard to cage the circuitry and still allow air flow.
I doubt anyone is arguing that. The link to Aquarius Air above explains why the geckos like AC units in the first place, and how they short boards. Making a better design to keep out geckos or mice even if not 100% reliable for the life of the unit, seems like a high school project, not even an engineering challenge.
OTOH fire ants are tenacious. The best solution is a closed, sealed relay, but the other protections remain very common since most (many?) AC units there do not have them as standard. AC runs for about 6 months or more of the year in Houston and I had to clean my relays annually, sometimes twice. That was before 2000 and things evolve.
While this dates from 2013 it is noteworthy that the ‘solution’ relay to ants was only sold in the US and Canada at the time, and even then did not appear to be standard on all the referenced branded units.
Fire ants have been introduced into Northern Australia and are marching south, so we will find out how it goes one day.
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I would like input as to the next logical step. Someone has to bring this issue to the attention of consumers and manufacturers. I have in mind to contact Tracy Grimshaw of A Current Affair or if someone can recommend someone better, perhaps a radio consumer advocate? Of all the posters, is anyone speaking on behalf of Choice? Can’t Choice lead the charge on this?
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Choice staff identify themselves in their profiles. @BrendanMays is our original Choice moderator, now supported by @jhook. A number of Choice staff involved in testing, journalism, and so on often frequent relevant topics.
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Maybe @Redlandsneen, this is a job for Standards Australia. We need a new standard to make all air conditioning units sold in Australia gecko-proof. Actually, include skinks too.
You can find their contact details easily, and petition for the new standard.
Or of course, if you find certain types of aircons not fit for purpose in your situation, don’t buy one. Find an alternative.
Sorry I am being a bit tongue in cheek, but you seem to be dismissive of members of this community offering advice and experiences.
Hi @Redlandsneen,
Thank you for sharing your experience, I appreciate what you’re saying about the need for these appliances to be fit for purpose to Australian conditions and I’ll be sure to share this with our product testers and investigations team. I see a lot of the complaints that are shared with us online, we receive a large number of requests including to run campaigns or large legal actions. Unfortunately this isn’t always possible, but we are watching this thread and we’d especially appreciate anyone else who has experienced these type of issues to share their experiences too 
It sounds like you already have some ideas for next steps, you could contact some media outlets to see if they want to run a story in the short term. We have some advice and resources that may be of further use here:
https://www.choice.com.au/shopping/consumer-rights-and-advice/make-a-complaint
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I’m sorry, I think you have misunderstood me. I was not being dismissive at all. BrendanMays is the first to offer some real suggestions for next steps. Most people agreed there is not much a lay person can do. It is up to the designers to come up with a barrier solution. There doesn’t seem to be anything that works to repel them. Moth balls were suggested and then found not to work, lanolin sprays apparently don’t work, so I’m not sure what you think I’ve dismissed. We are in the process of seeing what Toshiba is offering but fear any brand, even Panasonic, is going to come to the same fate.
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This seems very much to be blaming the victim. That poor roasted gecko! When are we going to protect the gecko from these dangerous air conditioning units?
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I would agree if they were the endangered native geckos which the Asian house geckos are also responsible for their decline.
But introduced vermin and feral animals have no place in Australia.
Haven’t read the whole thread yet but just wanted to point out, not just split system. $15k+ ducted system in Yeppoon QLD - exactly same problem.
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Back in my early days as a service tech, I once ran into a printer that had failed because mice had built a nest in it, & one of them had zapped itself by peeing on the high voltage part of the power supply PCB. The stench was horrifying. The bit that astounded me was that they’d be willing to nest in something as noisy as a dot matrix printer, which are loud enough to drown out a conversation from across a room.
Haven’t run into geckos in FNQ, but did once have a user there whose laser printer (this was back when laser printers were still new tech, & extremely expensive) kept on jamming for no obvious reason. I eventually figured out that it was due to the extreme humidity affecting the paper, & installing a lightbulb in the cabinet where the paper was stored (to keep it dry) fixed the problem.
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We had this happen to us a few years ago (Fujitsu) and had to install a new mother board at our own expense. We were, however, advised of a product that can be sprayed over the boards to protect it from being shorted out by geckos. So the new board was sprayed before being installed. There are a couple of different products, the one I know of is Action Clear HVAC-R and it is a corrosion protectant also. Costs approx AUD60 for the 350g spraycan. We have not had any issues since (but still have plenty of geckos!)
I know it doesn’t help your prior costs but it could save you in the future. I’ve also heard that the new fujitsu air-cons have gecko protection pre purchase.
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Great tip. Thanks for sharing.
Strange that the aircon service people don’t mention it?
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