Massachusetts heating season: which no-heat calls wake the on-call tech

In short: The Massachusetts heating season runs from September 15 through May 31 under 105 CMR 410.180, and inside it every habitable room and bathroom must hold at least 68°F from 7:00am to 11:00pm and at least 64°F from 11:01pm to 6:59am. Missing heat is on the state's list of conditions always deemed to endanger health, so a board of health inspects within one business day of a complaint and then gives the owner 24 hours from service of its order to make a good faith effort to correct it (410.600, 410.630, 410.640). For an after-hours line, a reading below the floor for that hour, inside the season, wakes someone tonight; outside the season the reading stops deciding it, and the call waits for morning only after the agent has screened for danger. Local boards of health may shorten the season at either end (Cambridge has delayed its start to September 30 this year), and Boston's winter heating page still prints June 15, the old code's date.

Key takeaways

• The floor depends on the clock: 68°F from 7:00am to 11:00pm, 64°F from 11:01pm to 6:59am. The agent records the reading and the time; it never decides what counts as cold.
• The regulation's 24 hours starts when a board of health order is served, and the order follows an inspection due within one business day of the complaint. A tenant's complaint to the board of health starts the inspection clock; the 24 hours waits for the order.
• A local board of health can end the season as early as May 15 or start it as late as September 30. Cambridge ended its 2026 season on May 18 and delayed the fall start to September 30. A list covering several towns needs a date per town.
• The same 64°F reading lands in two bins. At 11:30pm it meets the night floor and becomes a work order flagged for before 7am. At 8am it is four degrees under the day floor and rings the on-call phone.
• On a Toronto property management line, only 9 of 158 emergencies arrived between 10pm and 7am, and 25 arrived between 6 and 10 in the evening. In Massachusetts that whole evening window sits under the 68°F day floor.

The regulation's numbers

The heat rule sits in Chapter II of the State Sanitary Code, 105 CMR 410.000, which the Department of Public Health rewrote in 2023 (its notice of the changes). Older roundups cite the old numbers: 410.201 for heat, 410.750 for dangerous conditions.

| What the code sets | The number | Section |

|---|---|---|

| Season | September 15 through May 31 | 410.180(A) |

| Day floor | At least 68°F, 7:00am to 11:00pm | 410.180(A)(1) |

| Night floor | At least 64°F, 11:01pm to 6:59am | 410.180(A)(2) |

| Ceiling | The heating system may not push any room above 78°F | 410.180(B) |

| Where it is measured | Five feet above the floor, on a wall, more than five feet from an exterior wall | 410.180(C) |

| Local change | A board of health may end it no earlier than May 15 or start it no later than September 30, by notice on the town's website | 410.180(D) |

| Which rooms | Every habitable room and every room with a toilet, shower or bathtub | 410.160(A), 410.180(A) |

| Hot water | 110°F to 130°F at most fixtures, 110°F to 120°F at a tub or shower | 410.150 |

The Department of Public Health's May 2023 guidance adds that the season sets when the temperatures must be held, not when the boiler must run.

The clock a complaint starts

A tenant with no heat can call the board of health first. Section 410.600(A) requires an inspection on a written, oral, telephone or electronic request, whether or not the tenant told the owner, and even if the tenant stays anonymous. Failure to provide heat as 410.180 requires is item (2) on the list in 410.630(A) of conditions "always deemed" to endanger or materially impair health or safety. That listing sets the pace:

1. The inspection happens within one business day of the request (410.600(C)(1)).
2. Within 12 hours after the inspection, the board orders the owner to make a good faith effort to correct within 24 hours of service (410.640(A)(1)).
3. Violations off that list get an order within seven days and up to 30 days to correct (410.640(A)(2)).

M.G.L. c. 186, s. 14 also makes a landlord who is required to furnish heat and "willfully or intentionally fails to furnish" it liable to a fine of $25 to $300 or imprisonment for up to six months, and liable to a tenant for actual and consequential damages or three months' rent, whichever is greater, plus costs and a reasonable attorney's fee.

So the clock can start on a Friday night without anyone calling the office. The call log is the manager's half of the record: when the tenant reported the reading, what it was, and when a technician was sent.

Writing the no-heat line of the list

Our after-hours triage rules for a Toronto property management line wake someone for a short list of things, "no heat inside the legal heating season" among them, and everything else "waits with a callback number." Heat was there at the Ontario regulation's number, "not because a summer quarter tested" it. Below is the same line written for Massachusetts, as we would build it; nothing here is running in Boston.

The line has three parts, applied without weighing anything:

• Inside the season, below the floor for the hour: ring the on-call phone. One room counts, because the code covers every habitable room and bathroom.
• Inside the season, at or above the floor: a work order with a callback number. A night reading that meets 64°F but sits under 68°F is flagged for before 7am, when the floor goes up.
• Outside the season: the temperature floor stops deciding it, so the agent runs the danger screen instead: a gas smell, a heater that smokes, sparks or trips, water, no power, or a tenant who says someone is unwell from the cold rings the on-call phone. A call that clears the screen becomes a morning work order.

The example that matters feels wrong. A tenant reads 64°F at 11:30pm. That meets the night floor, so it waits, flagged. The same tenant reads 64°F at 8am. That is four degrees under the day floor, and the on-call phone rings. The agent never judges whether 62 degrees is cold enough; 62°F is under both floors, so inside the season it wakes someone at any hour.

The dates on the list are per town. Section 410.180(D) lets a board of health end the season as early as May 15 or start it as late as September 30, and Cambridge's notice of May 18, 2026 ended its season that day instead of May 31 and says the requirement stays off "until September 30, 2026, unless otherwise altered". So on the day this is published, a Cambridge tenant reporting 62°F overnight is outside the season, while the same reading in Boston, on the state's September 15 start, is below the floor. A portfolio across towns checks each town's website before September 15 and May 15, and again for any notice that supersedes the last.

What the agent asks on a no-heat call

In this order:

1. What does the thermostat or a thermometer read, and where is it. A number, not "freezing". A thermostat on an inside wall is close to where the regulation measures; a phone weather app is not a reading. If there is no number, the agent logs "no reading" and treats the call as below the floor, because a guess in the tenant's favour costs one trip.
2. When was that reading taken. The floor changes at 11:01pm and 7:00am, so the time of the reading decides the bin.
3. Is it every room or one. The answer tells the technician what to bring; the bin stays the same.
4. Is the heat central or in the unit. A central boiler that has stopped can mean every unit in the building is going cold; a unit furnace usually means one. The answer tells the technician which system to look at and how big the job may be.
5. Any smell of gas. A yes ends the heat questions. The call moves to the gas rule: the agent tells the caller to leave the building and call 911 once outside, and the on-call phone rings.

The agent never says who pays and never offers a space heater as the answer, because a portable electric heater does not count as a heating system (410.160(B)). Where a written rental agreement makes the tenant responsible for oil and a separate tank serves only that unit, as 410.210 requires, the fuel question goes on the work order. The call is recorded, and that recording has its own rules, in our note on Massachusetts call recording law.

Hot water, and what waits for the morning

Hot water runs on a different clock. Section 410.630(A)(1) lists a failure to supply hot and cold water as a dangerous condition once it has lasted "24 hours or longer", so the agent asks when the hot water stopped and whether cold water and heat still work. An outage already past a day, one with no cold water either, or one that has taken the heat with it rings the on-call phone. One unit that lost hot water this evening, with heat and cold water working and nothing on the danger screen, goes to the first job of the morning.

Everything else waits: a radiator that bangs, a thermostat with a flat battery and the heat still holding, a tenant who wants 72°F, a request to turn the heat on in the first days of September. A unit above 78°F can also breach 410.180(B); our list sends it to the morning queue unless the tenant reports something worse.

Why the evening matters more than 3am

The Toronto line, from the same post: 2,142 calls between June 1 and September 10, 2026, and 158 carried the emergency tag. After hours, 57 of 92 maintenance calls were emergencies; during the day, 66 of 240. Only 9 of the 158 emergencies arrived between 10pm and 7am. 25 arrived in the evening between 6 and 10, and 32 on a weekend.

That summer never tested the heat rule. Lay the Massachusetts floor over it and the evening sits under the 68°F day number, which holds until 11:00pm. The evening is when the coordinator has the phone face down at dinner and a tenant is deciding whether to call the board of health; the hour-by-hour pattern is in property management call volume by hour. Whatever answers at 7:30pm, a colleague's mobile, an answering service or an agent, needs the list to be right then.

What the roundups get wrong

The end date. Many landlord and tenant pages still say June 15. That was the old code, which required heat every day "other than during the period from June 15th to September 15th, both inclusive" (105 CMR 410.201, 2007 text). The current 410.180 says May 31. Boston's winter heating help page, last updated May 18, 2026, still gives September 15 to June 15. Its floors match the state's 68°F and 64°F, and we found no city rule behind the June date; a Boston manager should confirm with Inspectional Services before programming June routing. Inspectional Services takes no-heat complaints on weekdays from 8am to 4pm, and 311 takes them after hours.

The 24 hours. "Landlords must fix no heat within 24 hours" compresses three steps into one. The 24 hours is a good faith effort to correct, counted from service of an order that follows an inspection. It is not a grace period from the tenant's call, and the statute in c. 186 s. 14 is not tied to an order at all.

The inspection. For a condition on the dangerous list, the current code gives a board of health one business day to inspect (410.600(C)(1)), not a fixed number of hours from the call.

What we checked

We read 105 CMR 410.000 and the 2007 text it replaced, the department's May 2023 guidance and change notice, M.G.L. c. 186 s. 14, Boston's winter heating page and Cambridge's notice on September 24, 2026; where mass.gov refused a request, the current sections were read on Cornell's Legal Information Institute. How we approach a Massachusetts build is on our Boston page, and how a line like this gets covered is on after-hours maintenance calls. This is an operator's reading, not legal advice.

Frequently asked questions

When does the Massachusetts heating season start and end?

September 15 through May 31, under 105 CMR 410.180(A) as revised in 2023. A local board of health may end it as early as May 15 or start it as late as September 30, by posting a notice on the town's website. Pages that say June 15 are usually quoting the old code. Boston's winter heating page still said June 15 in September 2026, and we found no city rule behind the later date. Cambridge delayed its 2026 start to September 30.

What temperature does a Massachusetts landlord have to keep an apartment at?

At least 68°F from 7:00am to 11:00pm and at least 64°F from 11:01pm to 6:59am, in every habitable room and every room with a toilet, shower or bathtub, during the season. The heating system may not push any room above 78°F.

How long does a landlord have to fix no heat in Massachusetts?

Under 105 CMR 410.640(A)(1), once a board of health inspects and finds no heat, it orders the owner within 12 hours to make a good faith effort to correct within 24 hours of service of the order. The inspection is due within one business day of the complaint (410.600(C)(1)). The 24 hours is counted from the order, not from the tenant's call, and a landlord who willfully fails to furnish heat is separately liable under M.G.L. c. 186 s. 14.

Is no heat an emergency for an after-hours maintenance line?

Inside the season, a reading below the floor for that hour is an emergency, because the code lists missing heat among the conditions that always endanger health. Outside the season, or at a reading that meets the floor, it becomes a morning work order with a callback number once the call clears the danger screen: no gas smell, no heater smoking or sparking, no water or power problem, nobody unwell from the cold. The same 64°F reading is a morning job at 11:30pm and an emergency at 8am.

Does a space heater count as heat under the Massachusetts code?

No. Section 410.160(B) says a fireplace, a wood or pellet stove and a portable electric space heater do not meet the requirement for a heating system. A space heater can get a tenant through a night, but the unit stays out of compliance until the heating system holds the floor.