Opened in this order: door, gasket, power compartment, fan tray
Two wet seasons in a coastal city. The inside of the front glass was clean, which is the part everyone worries about and the part that rarely fails.The gasket had flattened by about a millimetre but still sealed. Water had not come through the face.
The bottom cable gland was the leak
Tight gland, cracked sealant around the entry. Not enough to pour, enough to wick.Inside the power compartment: a thin film of moisture and a line of corrosion on two terminal screws. That is how a totem dies. Not with a flood, but with a slow electrical leak that turns a screw green over eighteen months.
The breather valve had been painted over
Someone repainted the enclosure during a rebrand and covered the valve with everything else.A sealed metal box heats to sixty degrees in the sun and cools at night. Moisture condenses on the inside of the glass and on the cold side of the power board. A breather valve and a desiccant pack handle most of it. Without them, the unit looks fine for a year and fails in one humid week.
The intake faced the weather
The louvre on the windward side had been installed facing the prevailing wind, so every storm pushed water at the intake.No IP rating survives a wind-driven jet aimed at a louvre. The fix was a deflector and a line in the install manual that nobody reads: orient the intake away from prevailing weather.
What IP56 and IP65 actually promise
IP56 is dust protection plus resistance to powerful water jets. IP65 adds dust-tight construction and jets from any direction.Neither covers condensation. Neither covers a gland sealed with the wrong compound. The rating describes a new unit in a lab, not a unit that has been repainted, relocated and pressure-washed by a contractor.
The twenty-minute inspection, five points
Torch inside the door along the gasket line. Cable glands for slack and sealant. Clear the drain hole under the power compartment. Look for corrosion on terminal blocks. Spin the fans and listen for bearing noise.Once before the wet season, twenty minutes per unit. Most of what we found here would not have happened.