Who is liable for an air conditioner on a facade — and why an HOA chair is on trial for it

On 11 September 2026, Astana's official design code came into force. One of its requirements would normally pass unnoticed in the section on aesthetics: the outdoor unit of an air conditioner must be fixed to the building's load-bearing structure, not to the facade finish.

At the same time, a criminal trial is under way in Astana over the death of a 23-year-old paramedic who was struck by an air-conditioning unit that fell from the second floor. In the dock is the chair of the building's HOA. A specialist has already told the court that longer anchors, driven through the bracket into the load-bearing structure, would have held the unit in place even as the cladding collapsed.

Two events, one problem. Who in Kazakhstan is responsible for an outdoor unit on a facade, who issues the permit, who is required to carry out the technical survey — and why the country still has no answer to the question of what to fix it with, and into what.

What happened at 24B Tauelsizdik Avenue

On 8 November 2025, part of the brick cladding on an apartment building in Astana collapsed. Five people were injured: two suffered open penetrating head injuries and fractures, two others sustained moderate and minor harm. Paramedic Uldana Myrzuan arrived on the call and was treating the injured when facade elements came down a second time: an air-conditioning unit fell on her. She died in hospital on 18 November without regaining consciousness.

The HOA chair has been charged under Article 254 of the Criminal Code — negligent performance of duties resulting in a person's death. The penalty: up to five years of restriction or deprivation of liberty, with or without disqualification from holding certain positions for up to three years.

The prosecution's case rests on three pillars:

• a 2017 technical report on the building existed: physical wear of roughly 31%, overall condition assessed as satisfactory, but the specialists explicitly flagged the need to repair the facade, plinth, roof and utility systems;
• the HOA chair was aware of that report and of her duty to monitor the condition of the common property;
• a forensic construction survey established that the collapse mechanism was not sudden but progressive: cracks widened, the brickwork spread apart, and the bond strength between the cladding layer and the load-bearing wall declined. The building had been signalling the problem for years. The defence argues that the HOA chair did not design the building, did not lay the cladding and did not install the air conditioner. As evidence, the defence asked the court to admit her correspondence with the condominium's former authorised representative dated 7 November 2025 — the day before the tragedy — about the condition and inspection of the roof; the defence itself notes that the exchange concerned the roof, while what collapsed was the facade.

At the hearing on 9 September 2026, a specialist in construction gave evidence. In her assessment, the building used a structural solution originally designed for a building of up to five storeys, whereas in fact it is a nine-storey block with a technical floor — and the added height substantially increased the loads on the structure. She treats the air conditioner's mounting as a separate defect and does not link the unit's fall directly to the collapse of the brickwork: with longer anchors embedded through the bracket into the load-bearing structure, the bolt would not have come away.

The criminal case was originally opened under Article 278 of the Criminal Code (substandard construction), and Article 306 (production or sale of goods, performance of works or provision of services not meeting safety requirements) was added later. Only Article 254, against the HOA chair, reached trial.

On 10 September 2026, the prosecution entered two documents into the case file that explain why. The first is a decision to terminate the criminal case against the developer, dated 21 July 2026 and approved by the Astana prosecutor's office. The prosecutor cited three grounds: criminal liability for the relevant offence was introduced only on 1 January 2015, whereas the building was constructed in 2003–2004 and commissioned in 2005; the statutory warranty periods had expired and more than 20 years had passed since construction; and the individuals directly involved in the construction had died. The second document is a report dated 6 August 2026 on separating materials and opening a distinct proceeding against the building's previous management officers — also under Article 254.

It is precisely this configuration — no developer left in legal terms, but a queue of chairs — that provoked the reaction of the professional community. HOA chairs from across the capital attended the preliminary hearings, and a petition followed. Its authors stress that they are not asking for anyone to be excused from liability and are not intervening in this particular case; they are raising the question of HOA chairs' liability in such situations in general.

No verdict has been delivered; the case is being heard on the merits. Everything above reflects the parties' positions and testimony given in open court, not facts established by the court.

Whatever the outcome, this trial has exposed a systemic gap in regulation. Let us take it apart.

Why an outdoor unit is a structural question, not a comfort question

In an owner's mind, an air conditioner sits next to the refrigerator. In reality it is a cantilevered load projecting beyond the wall several storeys up, operating under constant vibration, winter icing, wind pressure and corrosion of its fixings.

What determines whether the unit falls:

• The layer the anchor reaches. A bracket may be fixed only into the load-bearing layer of the wall. Cladding brickwork, plaster, insulation and the sub-frame of a ventilated facade are not load-bearing. An anchor seated in the cladding holds the unit exactly as long as the cladding itself holds. This is the scenario now before the court.
• Anchor length and embedment depth. A short plug in hollow brick versus a long anchor reaching the load-bearing layer is the difference between fifteen years in service and failure in the first winter.
• Load margin. A domestic outdoor unit weighs 30–60 kg, but the bracket is selected not by that weight alone, but by weight with factors for dynamic loading, wind and ice.
• Corrosion. In a climate swinging from −35 to +40 °C, a bracket and fixings without corrosion protection are a consumable, not a permanent structure.
• Operation. Controlled condensate drainage, noise and vibration for neighbours, and access for servicing and removal. Today in Kazakhstan not one of these parameters is recorded in any document for any specific apartment. There is no installation certificate, no mounting record, and no entry in the building's inventory of common property.

Who issues the permit: three levels, no single window

There is no separate public service in Kazakhstan called "permission to install an air conditioner." Instead there are three levels of approval that do not connect to one another.

Level 1. The owners of the building

The facade is expressly listed as common property of the condominium object in the Rules on the Management of a Condominium Object (Order No. 108 of the Minister of National Economy of Kazakhstan, 19 February 2015). Fixing private equipment to common property is an act of disposing of common property — a matter for the owners' meeting, not for a verbal arrangement with a technician.

Article 40 of the Law on Housing Relations (No. 94-I of 16 April 1997) sets two frames:

• paragraph 2: refitting and/or reconfiguration of an apartment or non-residential premises is carried out by decision of the owner on the basis of a design, in accordance with legislation on architectural, urban-planning and construction activity — which, since 1 July 2026, means the Construction Code;
• paragraph 3: the written consent of no fewer than two-thirds of all owners of apartments and non-residential premises is required where the changes affect load-bearing and/or enclosing structures, building-wide utility systems, the common property of the condominium object, or the functional designation of premises. An outdoor unit on a facade falls into two of those categories at once: it affects both load-bearing (enclosing) structures and common property. Formally, then, both a design and a two-thirds vote are required. In practice, almost nobody who mounted a unit between 2010 and 2024 collected those two-thirds. Hence the fork the court now has to resolve: if there was no decision of the owners' meeting, who is the offender — the owner who installed it, or the chair who failed to notice?

Level 2. The akimat: architecture and urban planning

As soon as the external appearance of the facade changes, the remit of the architecture and urban-planning department and the city's design code apply. Buildings in historic and protected zones fall under a separate regime.

Since 1 July 2026, the design code is no longer a local initiative: it is defined in the Construction Code, and the Rules for Developing a Design Code were approved by Order No. 256 of the Acting Minister of Industry and Construction of 22 May 2026. A document equivalent to the capital's can now appear in any city.

Level 3. Technical requirements and the installer

Here regulation is almost absent — see below.

Liability: who, and on what basis

Note the structure of that table: everyone bears some liability, yet nobody is subject to a rule stating how an outdoor unit must be mounted, how that must be documented, and who answers for it. When a tragedy occurs, enforcement takes the path of least resistance and looks for the person whose duty to monitor the building is written down. That person is the HOA chair.

A note on warranties: why they do not rescue the existing stock

The ten-year period for load-bearing structures, roofs and external walls is a strong rule. But it is new, and it is not retroactive.

How it worked before 1 July 2026. The sources here are easy to confuse, and lawyers do confuse them. The Law on Shared Participation in Housing Construction now in force (No. 486-V of 7 April 2016) sets no minimum of its own: it defines the warranty period by reference to the Civil Code and to legislation on architectural, urban-planning and construction activity. The express "no less than two years" rule sat in the predecessor shared-construction law (No. 180-III of 7 July 2006, repealed in 2016) and in Article 69 of the Law on Architectural, Urban-Planning and Construction Activity (No. 242 of 16 July 2001): the warranty was set by contract according to the building's design service life, but could not be less than two years from the date of commissioning. That two-year floor is what developers wrote into shared-construction contracts.

Alongside it, Article 665 of the Civil Code applied and still applies: under a construction contract, the warranty period is ten years from the date the client accepts the building, unless a different period is provided by legislation or by the contract. Hence the conflict on which these disputes turned: lawyers pointed to the Civil Code's ten years, developers to the two years in the contract and in the sector law. The "unless the contract provides otherwise" clause worked in the developer's favour — and Article 665 governs the relationship between client and contractor, not between a buyer and a developer. Ten years under the Civil Code is a position to be argued in court, not an automatic guarantee.

How it works from 1 July 2026. The Construction Code sets out the periods in detail: 10 years for the principal structural elements — foundation, frame, facade, roof; 5 years for other defects such as sound insulation, waterproofing and cold bridging; and manufacturer's warranty terms for engineering equipment. One detail matters for our topic: a developer cannot hide behind a short manufacturer's warranty on facade materials, because factory warranties apply only to engineering equipment.

What this means in practice. The building at 24B Tauelsizdik was commissioned in 2005. The prosecutor's office terminated the case against the developer partly because the warranty periods had expired and more than twenty years had passed since construction. For a typical Kazakhstani building put up between the 1970s and the 2010s the picture is the same: no warranty, often no developer in legal terms — and the wall is still standing.

The one door that remains open: where a construction defect creates a threat to life and health, the rules on compensation for harm apply, and claims for harm to life or health are not subject to any limitation period at all (property claims carry the general three-year period running from discovery). But that route runs through the courts and an expert survey, not through a warranty letter.

The conclusion for the sector is simple: for the existing stock, this is not a warranty question. It is a question of surveys and maintenance.

Regional differences: where rules already exist

The practical takeaway: the legal risk of removal orders and fines is higher in cities with a design code, while the physical risk of a unit falling is identical across the country. So far, mainly the first is regulated.

Who must carry out the survey, and who pays

Who. A technical survey of the reliability and stability of buildings and structures may be performed only by a certified expert or by an accredited organisation with such experts on staff; the report is signed by the experts personally, with their individual stamp. Since 1 July 2026, new Rules for Technical Surveys of the Reliability and Stability of Buildings and Structures apply, approved by Order No. 263 of the Minister of Industry and Construction of 29 May 2026; they replaced the 2015 rules and were drafted to fit the Construction Code. The technical survey itself is set out in a dedicated article of the Code — Article 60, "Technical survey of the reliability and stability of buildings and structures." Its list of grounds for a survey includes both the expiry of the design service life and the arrival of the intervals set for technical inspection during operation (on a recurring basis). The legal ground therefore exists; what does not exist is a regime in which the state itself notifies owners at a set frequency. The operation of buildings and the duties of the person responsible for operation are in Articles 136–138.

This is a point of principle for the sector: neither the HOA chair, nor a maintenance technician, nor the building council is a body that can issue a finding on the condition of a facade. Their function is to inspect, document, initiate a survey and act on its findings. Asking an HOA chair for an engineering assessment of cladding bond strength is much like asking them for a medical diagnosis.

Who organises it. Under the updated rules governing the housing inspectorate, organising the state technical survey of an apartment building, determining the list, timing and sequence of major repairs to common property, participating in the acceptance of works and issuing binding orders all fall within its functions. The inspectorate also checks whether the management entity or the apartment-building manager holds a document confirming their qualification. In parallel, an inventory of the housing stock and a register of apartment buildings are being compiled through the akimats. The capital has an additional instrument: the new Constitutional Law on the Status of the Capital of the Republic of Kazakhstan (No. 299-VIII of 5 June 2026, in force from 1 July 2026) allows the akimat to conduct technical surveys of apartment buildings and to compile a list of buildings to be brought into line with a unified appearance, with costs subsequently reimbursed from the budget once residents have decided.

Who pays. Surveying the facade of a nine-storey building costs tens of thousands of tenge — and, with instrumented testing and opening up of structures, hundreds of thousands. There is one source: the accumulation contributions for major repairs. The minimum is set by Article 32 of the Law on Housing Relations: no less than 0.005 of the MCI established by the law on the republican budget, per square metre of usable floor area. In 2026 that works out at roughly ₸21.6 per m². A building of 5,000 m² paying the minimum accumulates about ₸108,000 a month — and that has to cover everything: roof, entrances, networks, lifts. A facade survey competes with live emergencies, and almost always loses. Until the funding of surveys is separated from the common pot, the duty to "regularly inspect a structurally unstable wall" remains a rule without resources.

Is installing an air conditioner a licensed activity?

The short answer: formally, in part. In practice, no.

• Construction and installation licence. The licensed sub-types of construction and installation works include the installation of internal heating, ventilation, air-conditioning and refrigeration systems and their external networks. So installing climate systems as construction work is licensed. But fitting a domestic split system in a single apartment is not treated in practice as construction work on a site: nobody checks the installer's licence, and no supervision applies.
• Ozone-depleting substances permit. Work using ODS, and the repair, installation and servicing of equipment containing ODS, require a permit from the environmental authority (Article 309(4) of the Environmental Code — "Regulation of the handling of ozone-depleting substances"; the service is delivered through egov). An important qualification: this concerns equipment using ozone-depleting refrigerants, above all older units running on R-22. Modern domestic split systems run on HFCs (R-410A, R-32), which are not ODS; their circulation is regulated under the Kigali Amendment, and for Kazakhstan that is primarily an import question rather than an installation permit.
• Competence for the mounting itself. There are no competence requirements for the person who drills into a load-bearing wall and selects the anchor. There is no mandatory record of concealed mounting works. And unlike the air conditioner itself, the mounting carries no warranty. For comparison: in Singapore, only a trained installer registered with the relevant authority and carrying an identification pass may install or relocate an outdoor unit, and the owner must check the condition of the supports at least every six months. The net result: the state controls which gas the air conditioner is charged with, and does not control what holds it to the wall nine floors up.

International practice: mandatory intervals instead of a search for someone to blame

What all three models share, and Kazakhstan lacks:

1. A mandatory interval initiated by the state, rather than action "on residents' complaints": the notice goes to the owners, not the other way round.
2. A named, qualified inspector who signs personally and carries reputational risk. Kazakhstan has the institution of certified experts — what it lacks is any duty to engage them at a set frequency.
3. Liability on the building owner, not on a hired manager. The manager executes the procedure; they are not the sole bearer of criminal risk.
4. The fixing of mounted equipment is itself regulated. In Hong Kong it is a distinct category of work requiring a registered contractor; in Singapore it is a specific inspection item.

What to do about buildings already standing: eight proposals

Developers of new residential complexes solve the problem at design stage, with cages, recesses and technical balconies. The problem lies in the existing stock, where tens of thousands of units hang on facades with no design, no decision of the owners' meeting and no paperwork.

1. A register of outdoor units in every building. A walk-round, photographic record, linkage to the apartment, and entry into the inventory of common property. A management entity can do this now, with no change in legislation — and it is the first thing that would protect an HOA chair in court.
2. A mounting record for every new installation or relocation. Anchor type and length, the wall layer the fixing reaches, the bracket's design load, the installer, the date. One page, annexed to the decision of the owners' meeting.
3. A directly applicable rule: fixing only into the load-bearing layer. A prohibition on fixing into cladding brickwork, plaster, insulation or the sub-frame of a ventilated facade. Astana's design code already states this requirement; it makes sense to raise it to the level of a national construction standard.
4. Mandatory periodic facade surveys for buildings above a defined age and height — on the PFI and FISP model: by a certified expert, with the report uploaded to the digital housing-sector system and a mandatory notice from the housing inspectorate.
5. A dedicated funding source for surveys. A ring-fenced share of major-repair contributions, or co-financing from the local budget. Without money, the duty is not performed.
6. A standard cage solution during major facade repairs. Almaty's experience shows a workable model: bringing the facade to a unified appearance and installing cages are delivered as a single package of works agreed with owners, rather than left to each resident individually.
7. A clear division of liability in law. An express rule: the owner is responsible for the condition of their private equipment on the facade, while the management entity is responsible for inspecting, documenting and putting the matter to the owners' meeting. Today that fork is resolved not by legislation but by an investigator.
8. Liability insurance for management entities. Criminal liability for a chair does not compensate the victims. Insurance does.

What to do right now

If you are an owner planning an installation:

• put the matter to the owners' meeting and obtain a decision: the facade is not yours, it is common property;
• in cities with a design code, check the permitted location (courtyard facade, cage, recess) with the architecture department before buying the equipment;
• require from the installer a record stating the anchor type and the wall layer the fixing reaches, plus photographs of the connection before it is closed up;
• provide for controlled condensate drainage — the single most common source of disputes with neighbours and of enforcement orders;
• keep the paperwork: you and the building will both need it. If you are an HOA chair or a manager:
• carry out and minute a scheduled facade inspection with photographs, covering separately every point where equipment is mounted;
• for each defect found, submit a written notice to the owner and to the housing inspectorate: correspondence about the roof does not substitute for correspondence about the facade;
• where there are cracks in the cladding, delamination or signs of corrosion in embedded fixings, initiate a technical survey by a certified expert and put the matter to the owners' meeting with a cost estimate;
• check whether the building has a technical report from earlier years: if it contains recommendations on facade repair, the plan for implementing them must exist on paper;
• write the procedure for installing outdoor units into a decision of the owners' meeting: location, type of fixing, mandatory record;
• in Astana, use the transition period to 1 January 2027 to bring the facade into line with the design code on your own schedule rather than under an enforcement order.

Conclusion

The Astana case looks like a case about an air conditioner. In truth it is a case about the fact that, under Kazakhstani regulation, equipment mounted on the facade of an apartment building is nobody's responsibility — until it kills someone. After that, responsibility settles on whoever carries the most general statutory duty to maintain common property.

Twenty years after a building is completed, the developer is gone: the warranty has expired, the proceeding has been terminated, some of those involved have died. What remains is the person who happened to be chair when the cladding came down — and a queue of those who were chair before.

Design codes address the appearance of the city, and they are doing so better and better. But here, aesthetics and safety are the same task: a unit tucked into a cage and anchored into the load-bearing layer is both better-looking and less likely to fall. Two things are missing: a mandatory interval for facade inspections by certified experts, and a rule stating what to fix a unit with, and into what. Neither is a question of money. Both are a question of decision.

Prepared by the ZhKH 24 editorial team on the basis of legislation in force and materials from open court hearings. The case is before the court; no verdict has been delivered.