Heating Season Starts Sept 15: What the Owner Provides

Every September I get the same question from renters and from small landlords, usually a day or two apart, from opposite ends of the lease: whose job is the heat? The Massachusetts sanitary code answers it in a handful of short sections, and it was rewritten in 2023, so a few of the numbers people carry around are out of date. A bathtub or shower now has its own cap.

Heating season, September 15 to May 31

105 CMR 410.180 says the owner shall provide heat in every habitable room and every room containing a toilet, shower or bathtub from September 15 through May 31, at least 68°F between 7:00 A.M. and 11:00 P.M. and at least 64°F between 11:01 P.M. and 6:59 A.M. Subsection (B) runs the other way: at no time shall the heating system cause the temperature to exceed 78°F in any room during the heating season. Overheating breaks the same section that requires heat in the first place. And the reading is taken at a height of five feet above the floor, on a wall more than five feet from an exterior wall, so a cold draft at the window doesn’t settle the question by itself.

Your city can shift the dates

Subsection (D) is newer and worth knowing. A board of health may alter the heating season for all residences in its jurisdiction in a particular year, ending it no earlier than May 15 or delaying the start no later than September 30, by posting notice of the change on the municipality’s website. It doesn’t need a variance to do it. It’s a call the board makes for a given year rather than a standing local rule, so the municipality’s website is where the operative date has to be.

What the 2023 rewrite did to hot water

105 CMR 410.150 keeps the floor and the ceiling the old code already had. The owner has to provide and maintain equipment capable of heating and delivering hot water, in a quantity and pressure sufficient for the ordinary use of the fixtures, at not less than 110°F, and for fixtures other than a bathtub or shower the ceiling is 130°F. What the rewrite added is a lower ceiling at a bathtub or shower, 120°F. So if the complaint is a cold shower, turning the tank up past the cap isn’t a lawful answer. The code also says an inspection has to include the system’s actual performance, and if possible should happen at the times and conditions the occupant identified as insufficient.

Who pays for the fuel and the utilities

The same two-condition pattern runs through two sections. Under 105 CMR 410.200 the owner provides the electricity or gas used in each dwelling unit unless two conditions are both met: the electricity or gas is metered through a meter serving only that unit, and a written rental agreement provides for payment by the occupant. Under 105 CMR 410.210 the owner provides for the oil used for heating or hot water unless the oil comes through a separate tank serving only that unit and the occupant is required to provide it under a written rental agreement. A verbal understanding does not do it in either case.

Water is the strict one

105 CMR 410.130 says an owner who wants to bill the occupant separately for water or sewer has to comply with M.G.L. c. 186, § 22, which means a submetering device measuring only that unit, ultra-low-flush toilets and water conservation devices on all showers and faucets, a written rental agreement at the start of a new tenancy describing the submetering and billing arrangements, and a certificate filed with the board of health or the municipal agency that enforces the sanitary code, signed by the owner under the pains and penalties of perjury, with a licensed plumber certifying that the submeters and toilets went in to accepted plumbing standards. The owner also has to give the occupants of each unit a copy of that certificate with the written rental agreement. And an owner submetering water may not shut off or refuse water service because a separately assessed water charge went unpaid.

What to do with this

If you’re renting, read the utility clause before the first cold night. If you own or are about to buy a two or three family, check that what’s billed matches what’s actually metered and what the written agreement says, and put it on the due diligence list next to the smoke certificate. Send me the address and I’ll tell you what I’d ask. Diana Kim, REALTOR®, eXp Realty.