The Condenser the HOA Made Them Move
Why this matters
An outdoor unit can be set perfectly - level pad, correct clearances, a clean line set, a passed inspection - and still be in a place it is not allowed to be. Two kinds of rule decide that, and neither is visible from the yard: an easement recorded against the lot, and the covenants of a homeowners association. Both bind the property, both outlive the job, and when either one is enforced the cheapest fix is a relocation that costs most of the original labor again. This case follows one letter back to the two documents behind it, and to the three questions the shop now asks before anyone picks a spot.
The letter
Five weeks after an HVAC shop replaced a split air conditioner with a heat pump in a newer subdivision, the homeowner forwarded a letter from the association's management company. In substance: the new outdoor unit had been installed without architectural review; the covenants require mechanical equipment to sit within 5 ft of the rear or side wall of the house and be screened from the common area; the unit stood near the rear lot line, visible from the walking path behind the lots; the owner had 30 days to submit an application and correct it, after which the association's enforcement process would begin. The letter also noted, in one line, that the unit appeared to be inside the recorded utility and drainage easement.
The homeowner's question to the shop was the obvious one. You picked the spot; who pays to move it?
How the spot got picked
The old condenser had sat in the side yard, about 8 ft wide between the house and the fence, on a pad tight against the wall. The new heat pump was larger, and its installation instructions called for more clearance on the coil side than the old unit had, plus room above for snow and defrost drainage. The tech and the homeowner walked the yard together and chose an open corner of the rear yard where the unit would have clearance on all sides and be farther from the bedroom windows. The line set ran 26 ft along the rear wall and out across the lawn in a shallow trench. The homeowner agreed, the tech noted "relocated to rear yard per customer" on the ticket, and the mechanical permit's final inspection passed, because the inspector checks the installation against the codes the department enforces, not against private covenants or the utility's easement.
Nothing in that sequence was careless. It is the reasoning a good tech uses for noise and clearance. It simply never asked what the lot itself allowed.
STREET
+-------------------------------------+
| front yard |
| +-------------------------+ |
| | HOUSE | [A] | side yard,
| | [C] | | 8 ft to fence
| +-------------------------+ |
| rear yard |
| [B] |
|- - - - - - - - - - - - -| easement edge
| 7.5 ft utility + drainage strip | 7.5 ft in
+-------------------------------------+
rear lot line [P] transformer pedestal
common area walking path
A is the old position, B is where the heat pump went, 4 ft off the rear lot line, and C is where it ended up: against the rear wall, 3 ft out from the siding, behind a screen.
The two documents behind the letter
The plat. The recorded subdivision plat showed a 7.5 ft utility and drainage easement along the rear line of every lot on that block. An easement is a recorded right of someone other than the owner, here the utilities and the municipality, to use a strip of the owner's land for a stated purpose: buried lines, a swale that carries the block's stormwater, access to maintain both. The owner keeps title and can usually use the strip in ways that do not interfere, but equipment set on it is there at the holder's tolerance. The unit at B sat 4 ft from the line, so 7.5 minus 4 put it 3.5 ft inside the strip. The pad also sat in the shallow swale the plat's drainage half was there to protect.
When the shop ordered locates for the relocation, the marks showed why the strip mattered: the electric secondary to that lot and the next ran in the easement about 2 ft from where the line set trench had been dug. The original trench had been hand dug to 8 in with no locate request, on the reasoning that a line set trench is shallow. It missed the cable. The shop did not get to call that judgment; it got lucky. The utility's own easement terms, and many utility tariffs, let it require removal of an obstruction from its strip when it needs access, and generally at the owner's cost rather than its own; the details are in the recorded easement and the utility's published rules, which differ by utility and state. See related: Utility Easements and What the Utility Can Make You Move.
The covenants. The association's declaration, recorded against every lot in the subdivision, required architectural review before any exterior change and set the equipment rule quoted in the letter. Covenants like these run with the land and bind each owner; the contractor signed nothing with the association. How they are enforced, and what limits a state places on an association's fines and procedures, varies a great deal by state, and some states restrict what an association may require for particular equipment such as solar. This is not legal advice: whether the shop owed the homeowner the relocation under its own contract, and whether the association's demand was enforceable as written, were questions for the homeowner's attorney and the shop's, not for the tech.
The decision
The owner of the shop read the ticket, the plat and the declaration, and made a business call rather than a legal one: the tech had recommended the spot, and the shop had no step that would have caught either document, so the shop would do the relocation labor and the homeowner would cover the screen. The shop's attorney looked at the contract language for future jobs; that change is below.
The association's application asked for a site plan, the unit's data sheet and a screen detail, and its review committee approved location C in 12 days, inside the 30-day window.
The relocation
The work was scheduled the day after approval, and every step that put a hand into stored energy carried its own control.
- Electrical. The disconnect and the breaker feeding it were opened, locked and tagged, and the absence of voltage was tested at the unit with a meter proven on a known live source before and after, the live-dead-live sequence in NFPA 70E Article 120 (120.5 in the 2021 edition, renumbered in 2024), with work practices under 29 CFR 1910.333(b)(2) for the shop's employees.
- Refrigerant. The charge was recovered by an EPA Section 608 certified tech into a recovery cylinder rated for the refrigerant, with gloves and eye protection against frostbite at the hose connections, rather than pumped into the old line set the crew was about to cut.
- Digging. Locate marks were down before the trench moved, the new trench along the rear wall was hand dug, and the old one near the secondary was backfilled by hand. Had the cable been nicked, the plan was to stop, keep everyone clear of the cut and the trench, and call the utility, not to tape it.
- The lift. The unit went from B to C on a two-person carry with a dolly, not one person walking a 180 lb cabinet.
- Reassembly and restart. The shortened line set was brazed under a nitrogen purge with a fire extinguisher at hand and the siding shielded, pressure tested with nitrogen through a regulator to the test pressure in the installation instructions, evacuated to the instructions' micron target with a decay check, and charged. Power went back on only after the panels were closed, the disconnect cover was on and the meter had confirmed the supply voltage at the disconnect, and the tech stood to the side of the disconnect while closing it. The unit was then run through a full heating and cooling check with the defrost cycle observed.
At C the unit sat 3 ft from the siding, which met the instructions' coil clearance, and the screen was set 2.5 ft out from the coil face with open slats so it did not recirculate discharge air. The bedroom-window noise the homeowner had worried about turned out to matter: C was closer to the primary bedroom than B, and the shop quoted a low composite barrier as an option, which the homeowner declined. See related: How to Place Outdoor Equipment Inside Noise Limits.
Labor ran 9 crew hours against 12 on the original installation, three quarters of the original labor again, plus the refrigerant and a new pad.
What intake now asks
The shop added three questions to every job that sets equipment in a new spot, asked by the office before the estimator visits:
- Is the house in a homeowners association, and does it require approval for exterior equipment? If yes, the estimate says the installation waits for the written approval, and the shop supplies the site plan and data sheet the application needs.
- Where does the recorded plat put the easements on this lot? The office pulls the plat and marks the strips before the estimator walks the yard, so the spot is chosen inside what the lot allows.
- Will we dig? Any trench, however shallow, gets a locate request and waits the state's notice period. A line set trench at 8 in is still digging.
The contract now names the location as one the customer approves after the shop has shown them the plat and any association rule it found, and says the customer is responsible for association approval. That wording came from the shop's attorney and is the shop's own; it is not a template.
References
- The recorded subdivision plat and the association's recorded declaration of covenants, from the county recorder.
- EPA Section 608 of the Clean Air Act, 40 CFR Part 82 Subpart F, for refrigerant recovery by certified technicians.
- NFPA 70E Article 120 (120.5 in the 2021 edition, renumbered in 2024), and OSHA 29 CFR 1910.333(b)(2), for de-energizing and verifying absence of voltage.
- See related: Property Lines, Easements and Where Equipment Can Go; Utility Easements and What the Utility Can Make You Move; How to Read a Plat and a Survey; The Property Research Checklist for Large Jobs SOP.