Property Lines, Easements and Where Equipment Can Go

Why this matters

Where a condenser, generator or pool pump sits is decided by four separate sets of rules that never appear on the equipment's installation instructions: the zoning code's setbacks, any easements recorded against the lot, the HOA's covenants, and the location of a property line that is usually not where the fence is. Get any one wrong and the install is correct in every technical respect and still has to come out, at the shop's cost if the shop chose the spot. The time to settle placement is at the quote, before a pad is poured or a gas line is run to it.

This card explains how those rules work so you can ask the right questions. It is not legal advice; a boundary dispute or a question about what an easement permits goes to a licensed land surveyor and, where it is contested, to the owner's attorney.

Setbacks: what zoning actually controls

A setback is the minimum distance a zoning ordinance requires between a structure or piece of equipment and a lot line. Every lot has front, side and rear setbacks, and the numbers come from the local zoning ordinance for that lot's zoning district, not from the building code. Zoning and building are usually different departments with different staff, and a building permit for a generator does not mean zoning has checked where it sits.

How ordinances treat mechanical equipment varies widely, which is why there is no number on this card to memorize:

• Some ordinances treat condensers, generators and pool equipment as permitted encroachments, allowed to project a stated distance into a side or rear setback.
• Some hold equipment to the same setback as the house, or to an accessory-structure setback that differs from the house's.
• Many prohibit equipment in the front yard or require it to be screened from the street.
• Some set separate rules for generators because of exhaust and noise, or for pool equipment because of noise.
• Corner lots often carry a sight triangle near the intersection where nothing above a stated height may sit.

Read the ordinance section for the lot's district, or call the zoning office and ask a specific question: "What is the side setback for a standby generator in this zoning district, and is it measured to the unit or the pad?" How noise limits add to setbacks is covered in How to Place Outdoor Equipment Inside Noise Limits, and when an addition counts as an accessory structure is in Accessory Structures and the Zoning Question.

Setbacks are not the only distances. A generator's installation instructions and the fire code as adopted set clearances from openings, combustible walls and air intakes, which under NFPA 37 in the edition your jurisdiction has adopted can be reduced only under the conditions that standard and the unit's listing set. Gas utilities set clearances around meters and regulators. Electrical codes place disconnects within sight. A placement has to satisfy every one of these at once.

Measured from where

A setback is measured from the lot line, and in most ordinances to the nearest part of the regulated thing, which may be the equipment's housing, its pad or its overhanging parts depending on how the ordinance defines it. Two distances people commonly measure from instead:

• The curb or sidewalk. The public right-of-way usually extends past the sidewalk, sometimes well into what looks like the front lawn. A front setback measured from the curb overstates the space available.
• The fence. Which is the larger problem, below.

The fence is not the property line

Fences are built by people who were not surveying. A fence may sit a foot or two inside the line because the builder stayed safely on the owner's side, a foot or two outside it because a neighbor built it on their own land, or anywhere at all because it replaced an older fence nobody measured. After a few decades nobody remembers which. Hedges, mowing lines and the edge of a driveway are no better.

The line is fixed by the deed and the recorded plat or survey, and marked on the ground by survey monuments, typically iron pins or pipes driven at the corners. The county's online parcel map draws lines too, but those are approximate drawings over aerial photos and can be off by several feet or more; they are for finding a parcel, never for placing a setback. How to read a plat and a survey is the subject of How to Read a Plat and a Survey.

Practical rules for the field:

• If the owner has a recent survey, use it and find the pins it shows.
• If a pin is found, do not move, pull or dig it out; disturbing a monument creates the dispute you are trying to avoid.
• If placement depends on the line within a foot or two and there is no reliable survey, the owner needs a licensed surveyor to locate and stake it before anything is set. That is a cost and a delay the quote should name.

Easements: land someone else may use

An easement is a recorded right for someone other than the owner to use part of the lot for a stated purpose, most often a utility (power, water, sewer, gas, telecommunications), a drainage swale, or access. Easements are shown on the plat or in the title documents. Placing equipment, a pad or a structure inside one is often prohibited or allowed only at the owner's risk, and the holder may be able to require it removed to reach its facilities. What the utility can make an owner move, and at whose expense, is covered in Utility Easements and What the Utility Can Make You Move. For placement, the rule is simple: find the easements before choosing the spot, and treat the easement area as unavailable unless the holder says otherwise in writing.

HOA covenants: a third rulebook

A house in a community association is also bound by its covenants, conditions and restrictions (CC&Rs) and the architectural guidelines that go with them. These commonly require approval from an architectural review committee before installing visible equipment, and may dictate location, screening, color or fencing around it. The HOA's rules sit on top of zoning: a spot zoning allows can still be one the HOA forbids, and the reverse.

The state layer can limit what an HOA may require. Some states, among them California and Texas, restrict how far an association can limit solar installations, under the conditions their statutes set; a few address other equipment. Whether a given HOA rule is enforceable is a question for the owner's attorney. Whether approval is needed is a question for the HOA's management, and the answer, in writing, belongs in the job file before the install, not after the violation letter.

Worked example: a generator on a side yard

A shop is quoting a standby generator on the side of a house. The owner points to the side yard and says there is "plenty of room, about ten feet to the fence."

The numbers on site. The generator housing is 2.5 feet deep. Its installation instructions (illustrative) require 18 inches, 1.5 feet, from the house wall. The zoning office confirms that in this district mechanical equipment must sit at least 5 feet from a side lot line, measured to the nearest point of the unit.

Measured from the fence. The fence is 10 feet from the wall. The unit's outer face sits at 1.5 plus 2.5, or 4.0 feet from the wall, which is 10 minus 4.0, or 6.0 feet from the fence. If the fence were the line, the unit clears the 5 foot setback by 1.0 foot.

Measured from the line. The owner has a survey from the purchase, and the tech finds the iron pins it shows. The true line is 8 feet from the wall; the neighbor's fence sits 2 feet onto the neighbor's own land. The unit's outer face is 8 minus 4.0, or 4.0 feet from the line. That is 1.0 foot inside the 5 foot setback, a failure.

 - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - neighbor's fence
              2.0 ft
 ===================================== true line (pins)
              4.0 ft
           +-----------+  generator outer face
 . . . . . | . . . . . | . . . . . . . 5 ft setback line
           | GENERATOR |  2.5 ft deep
           +-----------+
              1.5 ft
 ##################################### house wall

The same unit, in the same spot, passes by a foot or fails by a foot depending on which line the tape starts from.

The options. Moving the unit closer to the wall is not available, because 1.5 feet is the instructions' minimum. The rear yard is the next look: the plat shows a 10 foot utility easement along the rear lot line, and the rear wall is 30 feet from that line, so a location against the rear wall, outside the easement and outside the rear setback the zoning office gives, works, at the cost of a longer gas run and longer conductors to the transfer switch, both of which change the quote. The other route is a zoning variance, which means an application, notice to neighbors and a hearing, and a timeline measured in weeks or months, not days.

What would change the call. In a district whose ordinance lets equipment encroach a stated distance into the side setback, the side yard may work after all, which is why the question to the zoning office names the equipment. If there were no survey and no pins, the honest quote names the surveyor visit as a precondition, because the 2 foot difference between fence and line is exactly the size of error that decides this case. And if the house were in an HOA requiring approval for visible equipment, the rear location still needs that approval before the pad is poured.

How to verify you placed it right

The job file should show the source of every distance: "line per owner's survey, pins found at both rear corners; side setback 5 ft per zoning office, measured to unit, confirmed by phone with name and date; rear easement 10 ft per plat." A placement decision with those sources attached can be defended to an inspector, an HOA or a neighbor. A placement decision measured from the fence cannot.

References

• Your local zoning ordinance for the lot's zoning district, and the zoning office's interpretation of how setbacks are measured
• The recorded plat, the owner's survey and title documents for easements
• NFPA 37, installation of stationary combustion engines, in the edition your jurisdiction has adopted, together with the generator's installation instructions
• See related: Utility Easements and What the Utility Can Make You Move
• See related: How to Read a Plat and a Survey