Maine has no law that makes you pay for heat. It has a stack of laws that punish you for being vague about it. That is the part most landlords miss, and it is why a heat dispute in January almost never turns on who was supposed to pay. It turns on what your lease said, what you disclosed before signing, and whether one tenant's meter was quietly warming the basement.
I manage units across Penobscot, Hancock, Waldo, and Piscataquis counties, and heat is the single most expensive variable in a central Maine rental. Statewide heating oil averaged $5.15 a gallon on the August 24, 2026 survey published by the Maine Department of Energy Resources, and the East/Downeast region that includes Bangor came in at $5.21. Fourteen months earlier the statewide average was $3.40. A lease that was fine at $3.40 can eat an entire year of margin at $5.21.
Here is the actual law, section by section, and the lease language I use.
This post is educational, not legal advice. Maine landlord-tenant law is particular, and the facts of your situation matter. For advice on a specific property or tenant situation, talk to a Maine-licensed attorney or contact Pine Tree Legal Assistance at ptla.org.
Who pays heat in a Maine rental, you or the tenant?
Maine law does not assign heat to either party. Your lease does. If the lease is silent, the cost falls back on you, because the tenant never agreed in writing to take it on. Whoever you pick, the choice has to appear in the lease and in your pre-signing disclosures.
That is worth sitting with, because it cuts against how most owners think about it. There is no statute in Title 14 that says a landlord must furnish heat. There is also no statute that lets you hand a tenant a fuel bill they never agreed to. The obligation is created by your own document, and then Maine law attaches a set of performance standards to whatever you created.
So the sequence matters. You decide. You write it down. Then the statute tells you what your decision now requires of you.
What does Maine law require once you agree to provide heat?
Once your lease obligates you to provide heat, 14 MRSA §6021(6) sets the standard. The heating system has to be capable of holding 68 degrees inside, measured three feet from an exterior wall and five feet up, when it is 20 below outside. Capability, not comfort.
The statute's language is that heating facilities must be "capable of maintaining a minimum temperature of at least 68 degrees Fahrenheit" under those measurement conditions. Read the trigger clause first, though. Subsection 6 applies "when the landlord is obligated by agreement or lease to provide heat." If the tenant holds the fuel account and pays for every gallon, subsection 6 is not doing the work people think it is.
Two other things in §6021(6) matter to a Bangor owner. It is a breach to run the building so cold that it injures the health of an occupant without an abnormal medical condition. And it is a breach to fail to operate the heating facilities well enough to keep the building's systems from freezing. That second one applies whether or not you are the party buying the fuel, because it is about protecting the structure.
Also in that subsection: municipalities are expressly empowered to adopt stricter standards, and a looser municipal standard is void. That sentence is why Bangor's code matters more than the state floor, which I get to below.
The 62-degree agreement almost nobody executes correctly
Maine does allow a landlord and tenant to agree to a lower indoor temperature, and I see it attempted more often than I see it done right. §6021(6-A) permits an agreement to heat below 68 degrees only if it satisfies every condition in the subsection. Miss one and you have a void agreement plus a habitability problem.
The agreement has to be a separate written document apart from the lease, in plain English, in at least 12-point type, signed by both parties. It has to state that either party can revoke it on reasonable notice. It has to set a minimum temperature that cannot fall below 62 degrees. It has to include a fair and reasonable rent reduction. And it cannot be used or kept in place if anyone over 65 or under 5 lives in the unit.
My position: for a normal central Maine tenancy, this is not worth doing. The rent reduction you would have to give back roughly matches the fuel you save, the agreement is revocable at will, and you have created a document that a tenant's attorney will spend an afternoon attacking. If you want lower heating cost, insulate the building.
What a tenant can do when the heat fails
A tenant with no heat has real remedies, and they escalate fast in a Maine winter. Under §6021(3) and (4), a tenant who is current on rent, who gave you written notice without unreasonable delay, and who did not cause the condition can bring an action and ask the court to set the fair value of use and occupancy. Rent is the rebuttable presumption for that value, so an abatement can run deep. The Law Court has held that consequential damages are not available for breach of the warranty, per Chiu v. City of Portland, 2002 ME 8.
Separately, 14 MRSA §6026 gives a repair-and-deduct right where the reasonable cost of compliance is less than $500 or half the monthly rent, whichever is greater. The tenant sends written notice by certified mail, you get 14 days (or you act promptly in an emergency), and if you do not, the tenant can have the work done and deduct the actual cost. Oil burner, electrical, and plumbing work has to be done by someone licensed under Title 32, which is the one guardrail in that section that protects you.
There is no Maine Law Court decision squarely on lack of heat, because the standard is codified. The closest analogue is Belanger v. Mulholland, 2011 ME 107, where a landlord's failure to provide running water for four months breached the warranty and supported rent-value damages. Rubin v. Josephson, 478 A.2d 665 (Me. 1984) confirms that a §6021 breach is an affirmative defense to a nonpayment eviction, which is how it usually shows up in Penobscot County District Court.
What does Bangor require that state law doesn't?
Bangor adopted the International Property Maintenance Code as Chapter 223 and amended the heating sections. If you furnish heat inside city limits, you owe not less than 68 degrees between 6:30 a.m. and 10:30 p.m., and not less than 60 degrees the rest of the night.
The Bangor Property Maintenance Code adopts the 2003 edition of the IPMC and then rewrites PM-602.2, PM-602.3, and PM-602.4 through §223-2(M). PM-602.2 carries the capability standard: every dwelling unit needs heating facilities that can hold 68 degrees at five feet above the floor and three feet from exterior walls at an outdoor temperature of minus 20. PM-602.3 is the supply standard, the day and night split above, and it binds any owner or operator who rents and is obligated to furnish heat. Nonresidential space sits at 65 degrees during working hours from October 1 to May 15.
The enforcement hook is the one owners underestimate. Under §223-2(F), Bangor's Code Enforcement Officer can order a structure vacated when it loses its source of heat. A dead boiler in a six-unit building is not just a maintenance ticket. It is a potential vacate order, and a vacate order in February is a rehousing problem you will be paying for.
One caveat before you paste a date range into a lease. The eCode360 text of Bangor's PM-602.3 emphasizes the temperature split rather than a heating-season window, while the IPMC template several Maine cities use inserts a September 1 to May 15 range.
Bangor's other layer is Chapter 282, the Tenants' Housing Rights Ordinance, effective March 9, 2023. It does not assign heat to anybody. It does control how fast you can react to fuel prices: rent increases inside city limits require 60 days' written notice, longer than the state floor. If you include heat and oil jumps 40% in a month, you cannot reprice for two months. That is a real underwriting constraint, and its rights are non-waivable.
Can you bill one tenant for heat that warms the whole building?
Not without a written agreement and a rent reduction. 14 MRSA §6024 bars you from making one tenant carry the cost of heat or utilities serving common areas unless both of you sign an agreement trading that cost for consideration that approximates what the service actually costs.
This is the provision that catches good-faith owners in older Bangor housing stock, and it catches them years after the fact. Plenty of pre-1978 two- and three-unit conversions in this city were wired and plumbed so that the first-floor unit's meter feeds the hallway lights, the basement, or a shared water heater. Nobody did that maliciously. It is just how the building got carved up in 1954.
The statute's definition of common areas is broad: hallways, stairwells, basements, attics, storage areas, and shared furnaces or water heaters. If the tenant's service reaches any of that, you need the written agreement, and the consideration has to approximate actual cost. Get it wrong and the tenant recovers actual damages or $250, whichever is greater, plus reasonable attorney's fees and costs. There is a rebuttable presumption that you knew.
The mirror image is 14 MRSA §6024-A. If the service is in your name and you do not pay it, the tenant can pay the utility directly and deduct it from rent, and a court awards the amount they paid or $100, whichever is greater. That one matters on heat-included buildings where an owner gets behind on a Versant account.
What I do at BHR: before we take over a building, someone walks the basement with the panel open and traces what each meter actually feeds. If a unit's service crosses into common area and we cannot separate it, the owner either pays to separate it or we paper a §6024 agreement with a documented rent reduction. We do not inherit the ambiguity.
What do you have to disclose before the lease is signed?
Two documents, both before signing. The total-price disclosure under 14 MRSA §6030-J has to itemize utility service costs the tenant will carry. The energy efficiency disclosure under 14 MRSA §6030-C goes to any tenant who pays for an energy supply, and you keep the signed copy three years.
§6030-J came out of LD 1490, sponsored by Rep. Christopher Kessler (D-South Portland), enacted as Public Law 2023, chapter 594 and effective January 1, 2025. It requires a written statement of what the tenant will actually owe: total rent, mandatory recurring fees, optional recurring fees, and utility service costs. Heat belongs in that last bucket. If you are asking a tenant to carry oil on a building you know burns 900 gallons a year, the disclosure is where you say so.
§6030-C is older and more specific. A landlord renting residential property as a primary residence has to give a prospective tenant who pays for an energy supply a residential energy efficiency disclosure statement, on the form developed under 35-A MRSA §10117 by Efficiency Maine Trust and MaineHousing. The alternative compliance path is listing each prior energy supplier along with a statement of the tenant's right to obtain a 12-month history of consumption and cost. Either way: deliver it before the tenant signs or pays a deposit, get their signature, sign it yourself, retain it three years.
The penalty side of §6030-C is getting sharper. Public Law 2025, chapter 411 added subsection 3, under which a tenant who never received a signed disclosure may terminate the lease on 30 days' written notice, beginning January 1, 2030. A bill in the 132nd Legislature, HP 963, went further and would have given a tenant who pays for heat a remedy measured as a share of their heating costs. Track that one.
Bangor adds a third piece of paper. Chapter 282 requires you to hand the tenant the City's Tenant/Landlord Rights and Responsibilities disclosure at signing, get it signed, and keep the acknowledgment on file for two years.
Can you shut off the heat if the tenant stops paying?
No. 14 MRSA §6014 makes it unlawful to willfully interrupt utility service, and the tenant recovers actual damages or $250, whichever is greater, plus attorney's fees. The account being in your name changes nothing. In a Penobscot County courtroom in February, this is not a defensible position.
I include this section because the question gets asked, usually in a phone call that starts with "I'm not evicting them, I'm just not filling the tank." That is the same thing. §6014 reaches interruption caused directly or indirectly, and a landlord who simply stops ordering oil on a heat-included lease has caused it indirectly. Use the notice to quit and the forcible entry and detainer process instead.
The related point that surprises Bangor owners: the winter shutoff protections most people have heard about do not cover the fuel most of us burn. Under 35-A MRSA §718 and Maine PUC Chapter 815, the winter disconnection period runs November 15 through April 15, and it applies to regulated electric and gas utilities. Maine PUC Chairman Philip L. Bartlett II told Maine Public that under the rules, "there is no prohibition on disconnections occurring in the winter period" without Commission authority. Heating oil, propane, and kerosene are not regulated utilities at all. A tenant on oil heat who runs out in January has no PUC protection. Their protection is §6021 and §6014, and both of those point at you.
Does heat included or tenant-paid make more money in Bangor?
It depends on the fuel and the building. Heat included wins on lease-up speed and on buildings with one boiler and no practical way to submeter. Tenant-paid wins on price volatility, and oil is volatile right now. Run the number before you decide, not after.
The volatility is not theoretical this year. The Portland Press Herald reported heating oil at $4.83 a gallon statewide on March 12, 2026, roughly a 22.6% jump in ten days after the strikes on Iran hit global crude, and $5.40 by March 26. If you are on a heat-included lease in Bangor, Chapter 282's 60-day notice rule means you absorb a move like that for two full months before a repriced rent can take effect. On a 12-month lease, you may absorb it for a year.
Electric heat has its own problem. Versant's standard offer supply rate for residential customers in the Bangor Hydro District rose from 10.56 cents to 12.95 cents per kilowatt-hour effective January 1, 2026, a 22.6% increase, on top of delivery and fixed monthly charges.
| Factor | Heat included in rent | Tenant pays heat |
|---|---|---|
| Who carries fuel price risk | You, for the full lease term | The tenant |
| Repricing speed in Bangor | Constrained by 60 days' notice under Chapter 282 | Not applicable, tenant buys at market |
| §6021(6) 68-degree obligation | Applies to you directly | Capability standard still applies to the equipment |
| Best fit | Single-boiler buildings, no separate zones or meters | Separately metered or separately tanked units |
| Tenant conservation incentive | None | Strong |
| Effect on tenant HEAP benefit | Benefit is reduced when heat is in the rent | Full benefit, paid to the tenant's fuel vendor |
| Risk of a §6024 common-area problem | Low, you are already paying | Higher in older converted multifamily |
That last row deserves more than a table cell. MaineHousing's Home Energy Assistance Program pays benefits directly to the fuel vendor, and renters can qualify. But MaineHousing's Chapter 24 rule reduces the benefit for renters whose heat is included in rent. If your tenant is income-eligible, tenant-paid heat routes real federal money to their fuel bill that heat-included does not. MaineHousing director Dan Brennan said in a March 12, 2026 release that the agency and its community action partners "stand ready to help as we head through the final weeks of winter" as prices climbed. More than 45,000 Maine households got HEAP assistance in 2025, roughly $23 million paid out to fuel vendors.
My general rule on the units we manage: tenant-paid wherever the unit has its own tank or its own meter, heat included where the building physically cannot support it. And Maine leads the country in heating oil dependence, which is why this question is heavier here than almost anywhere else.
What lease language on heat actually holds up?
Language that holds up names the fuel, names the account holder, and separates each utility instead of lumping them into one sentence. It also handles common-area service on its own terms. Vague clauses fail because Maine reads silence against the landlord who drafted the lease.
I am not going to hand you a form to paste into your lease, because your building is not my building and a Maine-licensed attorney should review whatever you use. What I can give you is the architecture, in the order I check it on every lease that crosses my desk.
- Name the heating fuel and the heating system by type. "Oil-fired hot water baseboard, 275-gallon basement tank serving Unit 2 only" is a sentence a court can work with. "Heat: tenant" is not.
- Name the account holder for every service separately: heating fuel, electricity, natural gas, water and sewer, trash. Do not write "tenant pays all utilities." That phrase is where §6024 problems hide.
- State affirmatively whether any service in the tenant's name reaches common areas. If it does, execute the separate §6024 written agreement with a stated rent reduction, and reference it in the lease.
- Record the fuel tank level at move-in as a number, signed by both parties, and state the move-out obligation in the same units.
- Reserve your access rights for annual heating system service and emergency repair, consistent with the 24 hours' notice Maine requires for non-emergency entry.
- Put the tenant's minimum-temperature obligation in writing on tenant-paid units. Something in the range of 55 degrees when the unit is occupied or vacant, so the pipes do not freeze on your dime while the tenant is in Florida.
- Delete any clause that reserves a right to shut off utilities for nonpayment. It is unenforceable under §6014 and it makes the rest of your lease look drafted by someone who does not know Maine law.
On item 6, be careful about how you frame it. You can require a tenant to keep the unit heated to a minimum to prevent freeze damage. You cannot use that clause to shift your §6021(6) obligation onto them on a heat-included unit, and you cannot use it to waive a habitability protection. Most Maine tenant protections are not waivable by agreement, and Bangor's ordinance says so explicitly about its own provisions.
The other thing I look for is what the lease does not say. A lease that never mentions the basement, never mentions the hallway light, and never mentions who fills the tank at move-in is a lease that will generate an argument in year two. Silence is not neutral in a landlord-drafted document.
Who fills the oil tank at move-out?
No Maine statute governs fuel level at move-in or move-out. That makes it purely a contract question, and most leases handle it badly. Document the tank reading at both ends, and remember you can only deduct a fuel charge from a deposit if the lease made the tenant owe it to you.
The deposit rules are unforgiving on timing. Under 14 MRSA §6033, you have up to 30 days on a written lease and 21 days on a tenancy at will, and missing the deadline forfeits your right to withhold anything at all. Wrongful retention exposes you to double the amount wrongfully withheld plus attorney's fees under §6034. I walk through the full set of deadlines and allowable deductions in our post on Maine security deposit law.
Applied to fuel: you can deduct an unpaid utility or fuel charge only if the lease obligated the tenant to pay that charge to you. If the tenant bought oil directly from a vendor in their own name, there is nothing for you to deduct, and a half-empty tank at move-out is your problem unless the lease said otherwise. The fix is item 4 above, written as a number with a signature next to it.
One practical note from doing this in Bangor: photograph the tank gauge on move-in day and move-out day with a timestamp, and attach both to the condition report. A gauge reading in a photograph settles this argument in about four seconds. A recollection does not.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is a landlord required to provide heat in Maine?
Not by statute. No Maine law forces a landlord to furnish heat. The obligation comes from your lease or agreement. Once it exists, 14 MRSA §6021(6) requires heating facilities capable of holding 68 degrees at three feet from an exterior wall and five feet above the floor when the outdoor temperature is 20 below zero.
What temperature does a Bangor landlord have to keep a rental at?
If you are obligated to furnish heat inside Bangor, the city's Property Maintenance Code requires not less than 68 degrees in habitable rooms and bathrooms between 6:30 a.m. and 10:30 p.m., and not less than 60 degrees during other hours. Bangor may impose a stricter standard than the state because §6021(6) expressly permits municipalities to do so.
Can a landlord in Maine charge a tenant for common area heat?
Only with a separate written agreement giving the tenant a stated rent reduction or other consideration that approximates the actual cost. 14 MRSA §6024 covers hallways, stairwells, basements, attics, storage areas, and shared furnaces or water heaters. Violate it and you owe actual damages or $250, whichever is greater, plus the tenant's attorney's fees.
What happens if a Maine lease doesn't say who pays for heat?
The cost lands on you. A tenant cannot be charged for a utility they never agreed in writing to assume, and since January 1, 2025, 14 MRSA §6030-J has required a written pre-signing disclosure itemizing the utility service costs a tenant will carry. Silence in a landlord-drafted lease is not read in the landlord's favor.
Can a landlord stop delivering oil if the tenant hasn't paid rent?
No. 14 MRSA §6014 prohibits willfully causing an interruption of utility service directly or indirectly, and letting the tank run dry on a heat-included lease qualifies. The tenant recovers actual damages or $250, whichever is greater, plus attorney's fees. Use a notice to quit and the forcible entry and detainer process instead.
Does including heat in rent affect a tenant's HEAP benefit?
Yes. Renters can apply for MaineHousing's Home Energy Assistance Program whether or not heat is included, but the program rule reduces the benefit when heat is bundled into rent. On a tenant-paid unit, the benefit goes to the tenant's fuel vendor at full value, which is a genuine argument for tenant-paid heat on income-eligible tenancies.
How we handle heat and utility language for owners we manage
If you own rentals in Bangor or central Maine and want a manager who traces every meter before takeover and writes utility clauses that survive a §6024 challenge, consider us at Bangor Home Rentals. We're a second-generation family business managing hundreds of units across Bangor, Brewer, Orono, Old Town, Ellsworth, and more, and our in-house tradespeople service the heating systems themselves. We'd love to earn your business. You can call us any time at (207) 262-0199 or click here to schedule a free property management consultation.
If you also rent to voucher tenants, the heating rules tighten further, and I covered the payment standards and inspection side of that in our post on Section 8 rentals in Bangor. HUD's NSPIRE standard requires a permanently installed heat source capable of 68 degrees during heating months and bans unvented gas, oil, and kerosene space heaters outright.