Said It Here

Should an outdoor heat pump be bolted down?

Heat pumps installed on shifting plastic pads without anchor bolts risk movement and structural stress. This lack of secure footing, combined with buckling pads, creates uneven surfaces where water pools against metal feet and housing, leading to premature rusting.

What people tried

Every workaround mentioned in the threads below. We haven’t tested any of them — and nobody here is claiming they worked.

  1. 1
    Placing thick pavers under the feet to raise the unit
  2. 2
    Securing the unit with a rigid pipe brace attached to the wall
  3. 3
    Suspending the unit with cargo straps to modify the base

In their words

Unedited, most upvoted first, each linked to the thread it came from.

“I am in Texas and recently had a heat pump installed and there are aspects of this install that are concerning me. They installed the heat pump on a plastic pad they put on top of the concrete pad the old condenser unit was sitting on”source ↗

“There seems to be a lot of water pooling where metal touches it. The green squiggly line is water pooling. Will that cause rusting of the feet and housing? Is that amount of sweating normal?”source ↗

“I feel like this unit should be bolted down, is that right?”source ↗

gorefi3nd · r/hvacadvice · 6 upvotes

“Is the plastic pad buckling in the middle causing the water to pool? I’d want it directly on concrete with a slight pitch away from the house.”source ↗

cizzle123 · r/hvacadvice · 5 upvotes

Where this came up

r/hvacadvicehome improvementhvac maintenanceinstallation quality

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