Alpine Hardware Premium Heat Pump Drillless Drill-Less Window Air Conditioner & Heat Pump Bracket - Window AC Support - Supports Air Conditioners Well Over 200 lbs. - No Drilling 2023 Model

Theres hardly any air circulation around my building so my sons purchased an air conditioner unit that fits in the window. The windows dont have much of a sill, so we got the Universal Window AC Support/Air Conditioner Bracket. They had to do some creative work-arounds with some 2 x 4s as we live on the third floor. No way to stand outside and screw things down. *chuckles* So far, everythings working well.

As the title states, this is one of the worst purchases I have ever made. From a design and metal quality standpoint it’s fine, but trying to put this thing together took literally hours, and that was with two people. The included directions might as well not exist, and the video for it is also an absolute disaster, it should banned from YouTube. There was not enough hardware included to build it properly, so I was only able to use 75% of the included screwsolts. I have absolutely 0 clue what its actually doing in my window right now or if it’s even really holding up the air conditioner. I was able to eventually cobble it together, but that was only after taking it apart and putting it back together about 5x... Both the directions and the video show you how to build the item, and then in the following steps essentially tell you to completely take it apart again. • If you hate yourself enough to buy this item, or you are really desperate and live in an apartment like I do where you can’t readily drill into your windows, I advise watching the video IN FULL (don’t bother reading the directions they were written by someone with wet brain), from start to finish, several times.... And while building this thing, if you find yourself with not enough hardware, pray. Just pray and believe and hope that this thing will stay together and not come crashing down and take out the persons AC who lives below you.

Ive got two of these. Im not unhappy with them overall, but they are quite difficult to set up. The feet have some trouble connecting with any exterior wall that has siding (which is pretty much every wall). The only way I can get the feet to connect with the wall is if the feet are positioned very inward, but then stability is horrible. Thats the main reason for the 3-star review. They work, but they take some fiddling and you for sure have to screw them into the windowsill directly. They come with spacers to help line up the screwed surface with the window frame so your A/C doesnt sit tilted inward. The provided screws will work for one install, they strip on the heads very easily, but they are a standard size so your local hardware store will have replacements for next year. Also, word from the stupid, careful not to pinch your fingers in this as it does fold completely and with zero resistance so it can collapse (when not mounted) and pinch your fingers easily. Its also very heavy and so the pinch has a real bite to it.

I was excited to get this because I thought it would work great for my purposes and save me a lot of the usual hassles with installing a new ac unit. I was sadly and totally wrong. It’s a one size fits most with a lot of assembly. Get out your toolkit, a couple people to help, and set aside a good bit of time. The instructions are unclear with not the greatest drawings. You will need someone to hold the multiple parts together while you screw and bolt them together. Some spots are so tight you need small hands and an offset screwdriver to fit in there. Some attachments you are trying to hold a nut with your fingertip as you try to get the bolt started in them. A lock washer with a standard nut would be better there than a lock nut. It’s not particularly stable even after it’s all bolted together and doesn’t hold the an ac unit that weighs less than their maximum. It doesn’t grip the window ledge and the whole thing wants to fall out of the window. Luckily we have a deck so the outside of the ac and this support frame are sitting on a stack of boards on a bench to keep it in place. Not a well thought out or constructed piece of equipment and a waste of time and money.

Although it says it fits 24 to 38, I installed it in my 21 window and it fits securely for my smaller A/C unit. Installed through the window and against the inner trim. I bought 4 total, and the others are mounted in the actual window channel, which eliminates the 3 air gap under the bracket that you need to seal up to prevent hot air from coming back in. Not sure what other customers were complaining about with the quality, like the picture of the 45 degree legs dangling straight down. I suspect they had the support legs installed backwards. There is a lip on one end of the support legs to prevent them from dropping down. Not sure why anyone would drill holes into their window sills, unless it was a permanent installation. But if you need A/C year round, a unit installed in the existing heating system is the way to go. But if you only need it in the summer months, these are the brackets to use and not make your window sills look like crap for the other 8 months of the year. It may be a little overkill for an 8000 BTU unit, but it is solid.

The connections once completed are solid but the side to side and depth adjustment procedure are unnecessarily burdensome and when you’re done the end of the interior braces have a vertical piece that is in the way of the air conditioner’s side panels

Solid product, suggest revision of sizing instructions. Would have been helpful to test size before tightening all bolts.

At the end of the day, this have proven to be the solid support that I sought. The description on Amazon is at best confusing if not inaccurate. I bought the “medium duty” dual-armed bracket for a 12,000 BTU LG air conditioner. The box says it is “light duty” and, in one place, says: “supports up to 80 lbs., typical range 5,000-10,000 BTU,” but the label on the box says: “to 12,000 BTU.” It is very sturdy and easily supported by 85-pound unit (installed correctly). The installation instructions are incomplete and poor, but since I have previously installed two single-arm support brackets from another manufacturer (with better instructions), I had little problem. The biggest error/omission in the instructions is the failure to adequately address the need to level the horizontal arm by adjusting the point on the horizontal arm where one attaches the angled bracket (that presses against the exterior wall). (The instructions seem to presume that the attachment point is at the far end of the horizontal arm, in conjunction with bolting on the bracket that connects the two horizontal arms, but this is WRONG for any but the very thickest house wall. This explains why some comments talk about “hanging” angled arms—they were simply installed incorrectly, probably because of the inadequate instructions.) For most wall thicknesses, the angled bracket must be attached several holes before the end, and this point of attachment may have to be adjusted several times as one trial-fits the air conditioner so that the horizontal arm leans slightly down so that condensate flows out rather that in. This problem is compounded by that fact that an insufficient bolts are provided for the connecting bracket if one attaches the angled arm at some other point on the horizontal arm. The screws supplied stand up perfectly well if one uses a correctly sized Phillips head screw driver.

Strong and it holds in place.

Since the written instructions for the two-arm, heavy duty version (drilling required) of this bracket are almost impossible to follow, a good installation video is needed, but there are a lot of problems in Alpines installation video. Mainly, the sections showing how to install the connector bar are pretty screwed up - it shows the long hex bar being inserted at different locations. Also, in the section for the final installation (at 2:52 of the video), the connector bar magically disappears altogether. More detailed comments, with many of the flaws in the video, can be found at the YouTube version of this video (the two arm, heavy duty, drilling required version). Alpine did a really sloppy job with this video.