Smoke and carbon monoxide alarms in a Lynn rental: who installs them, who keeps them working

Every Lynn rental has to have smoke detectors, and most have to have carbon monoxide alarms too — any building that burns fuel for heat or hot water, or has parking inside it. Who installs them, who keeps them working, and who answers when one is missing is set by two texts that point at each other: Chapter 148 of the General Laws, enforced by the fire department, and the State Sanitary Code, enforced by the board of health. This page quotes both.

What this page is: the statutes and codes that decide who must put smoke and carbon monoxide alarms in a Lynn rental, where, who maintains them, and what a tenant can do when one is missing — each quoted from and linked to its official text. It is not legal advice. Where a rule could not be read from a primary source, the page says so instead of guessing. When it matters, read the linked source or use the free legal help on our tenant rights page.

The owner's duty in one sentence: provide, install and maintain — 105 CMR 410.482

The sanitary code's alarm rule is three short paragraphs. The first is the one that matters at a rental: “Owners shall provide, install, and maintain in operable condition smoke detectors and carbon monoxide alarms in every dwelling that is required to be equipped with smoke detectors and carbon monoxide alarms in accordance with any provision of the Massachusetts General Laws and any applicable regulations of the State Board of Fire Prevention (527 CMR), State Board of Building Regulations and Standards (780 CMR), or the Board of Examiners of Plumbers and Gas Fitters (248 CMR).” Read the structure: the sanitary code does not itself say how many alarms or where. It borrows that from the fire laws in Chapter 148 and the regulations under them, and then makes providing, installing and maintaining them an owner's duty under the housing code — which is why the board of health can cite a missing alarm at an inspection. The second paragraph wires the two agencies together: the board of health “shall immediately notify the chief of the local fire department of any violation of 105 CMR 410.482 which is observed during an inspection of any dwelling.” The third gives the fire department the last word: if the fire department has found a dwelling “adequately equipped,” the board of health may not “impose any additional or differing smoke detector or carbon monoxide alarm requirement beyond that which has been found sufficient by the local fire department.” Nothing in the paragraph shifts any of this to the occupant. The duty to keep alarms “in operable condition” is written as the owner's; a lease clause assigning the tenant the batteries does not change who the inspector cites. Source: 105 CMR 410.482 — Smoke Detectors and Carbon Monoxide Alarms (LII text) · 105 CMR 410 — Minimum Standards of Fitness for Human Habitation

A missing alarm is on the list of conditions deemed to endanger health or safety — 105 CMR 410.750(N)

The sanitary code keeps a list of conditions that “shall be deemed conditions which may endanger or impair the health, or safety and well-being of a person or persons occupying the premises.” Item (N) on it is “Failure to provide a smoke detector or carbon monoxide alarm required by 105 CMR 410.482.” That classification is what gives a missing alarm legal weight beyond a citation. The remedies that attach to a condition on this list — rent withholding under c.239 §8A once the landlord has been told in writing or the board of health has found the condition, and repair-and-deduct under c.111 §127L after notice — are explained with today's rent figures on <a href="/repairs/">the repairs page</a>; this page only places alarms on the list. One practical consequence: a landlord's answer that the alarm was there at move-in is not a defense under 410.482, which says maintain, not merely install. Source: 105 CMR 410.750 — Conditions Deemed to Endanger or Impair Health or Safety (LII text), item (N) · M.G.L. c.239 §8A · M.G.L. c.111 §127L

How many and where, in buildings of one to five units — c.148 §26E

Chapter 148 sorts residential buildings by size and age, and the section that covers most of Lynn's housing stock — the two-families and three-deckers — is §26E. For one- and two-family dwellings, owners “shall install either an approved monitored battery powered smoke detector or an approved primary power smoke detector on each level of habitation and on the basement level,” placed “on the ceiling of each stairway leading to the floor above, near the base of, but not within each stairway” and “outside each separate sleeping area.” For buildings of three to five units the statute requires a detector “outside each separate sleeping area” and adds the common-area rule: “in all common hallways and basements of said residential buildings or structures a series of interconnected approved primary power smoke detectors shall be installed.” “approved primary power” is defined as the building's electric supply, with the statute's own definition in paragraph (c). Who checks: “The head of the fire department shall enforce the provisions of this section.” So a three-decker's front and back hallways need hard-wired, interconnected detectors, and each apartment needs one outside the bedrooms — and the person to call about a bare hallway ceiling is the fire department, not only the landlord. Source: M.G.L. c.148 §26E — Residential buildings or structures; installation of smoke detectors

Six units and up, high-rises, and new or substantially altered buildings — c.148 §26C, §26B and §26A

Larger and newer buildings are handed to the fire-prevention regulations and the building code rather than described in the statute. §26C: “Apartment houses containing six or more dwelling units, hotels, boarding or lodging houses, or family hotels which are not regulated by section twenty-six A or twenty-six B shall be equipped with automatic smoke or heat detectors as provided by the rules and regulations of the board of fire prevention regulations.” §26B covers any residential building up to seventy feet that is “erected or substantially altered to be occupied for residential purposes,” which “shall be protected with an approved automatic fire warning system in accordance with the provisions of the state building code,” a system that “shall include the features of automatic smoke detection.” §26A requires sprinklers in buildings “of more than seventy feet in height above the mean grade.” In each case the head of the fire department enforces. The detail — alarm types, spacing, replacement ages — lives in 527 CMR 1.00 and 780 CMR, which this page could not read from a fetchable source (see the caveat below), so it states the statute and stops there. Source: M.G.L. c.148 §26C — Certain public accommodations; automatic smoke or heat detectors · M.G.L. c.148 §26B — Automatic fire warning and smoke detection systems in certain buildings · M.G.L. c.148 §26A — Automatic sprinklers in high rise buildings

Carbon monoxide alarms: required wherever fuel is burned or cars are parked inside, with the landlord named — c.148 §26F½

The CO statute names the trigger and names the landlord. It covers every residential building that “contains fossil-fuel burning equipment including, but not limited to, a furnace, boiler, water heater, fireplace or any other apparatus, appliance or device that burns fossil fuel” or that “incorporates enclosed parking within its structure.” Such a building “shall be equipped by the owner with working, approved carbon monoxide alarms,” and the board's regulations must require “that a landlord or superintendent shall install either approved monitored battery-powered alarms or approved electrical wiring alarms as defined by the board, as are required to make the alarms operational at the beginning of any rental period by lease or otherwise and shall maintain and, if necessary, replace batteries or such battery-operated or electric hardwired carbon monoxide alarms annually thereafter to insure their continued operability.” That is the only place in these texts where batteries are mentioned, and the duty is the landlord's: working at the start of the tenancy, maintained and re-batteried every year after. Enforcement: “The head of the fire department shall enforce this section.” The exception is narrow — an all-electric building with no fireplace and no garage under it is the only Lynn rental that needs no CO alarm — and gas or oil heat, a gas water heater, or a parking level puts a building inside the rule. Source: M.G.L. c.148 §26F½ — Carbon monoxide alarms required in certain residential structures

When the building is sold, the fire department checks the alarms — c.148 §26F and Lynn's Fire Prevention Division

A sale is the one moment the statute guarantees an inspection. §26F: buildings not covered by §26A–§26C “shall, upon the sale or transfer of such building or structure, be equipped by the seller with approved smoke detectors as provided in section twenty-six E,” and §26F½(c) adds that every residential building “shall, upon sale or transfer of such dwelling, building or structure, be inspected by the head of the fire department for compliance with the requirements of this section.” In Lynn that inspection is done by the Fire Department's Fire Prevention Division, whose page says the office processes “smoke and carbon monoxide alarm compliance inspections required for the sale or transfer of residential property,” and gives fireprevention@lynnfire.org as the contact. For a renter the practical point is that a change of landlord is a moment the alarms were, or should have been, certified — and that the same office takes questions about alarms between sales. Source: M.G.L. c.148 §26F — Equipping with smoke detectors upon sale or transfer · Lynn Fire Department — Fire Prevention Division

What to do when an alarm is missing, chirping, or dead

Do not take it down. Write to the landlord the same day — date, unit, which alarm, what it is doing — because the remedies that matter later turn on written notice, and keep a copy. A chirp is usually a low battery; under §26F½ keeping CO alarms batteried is the landlord's annual duty, and under 410.482 keeping every alarm “in operable condition” is the owner's, so the request is reasonable to make and unreasonable to refuse. If nothing happens, two offices can inspect: Lynn's Inspectional Services Department enforces the sanitary code and can cite 410.482 and list the condition under 410.750; the Fire Prevention Division enforces Chapter 148. A complaint to either is protected activity — <a href="/retaliation/">the retaliation page</a> covers what happens if the answer is a notice or a rent increase. Source: Lynn Inspectional Services Department · Lynn Fire Department — Fire Prevention Division

What this page does not know

Honest caveat: no public dataset counts alarm violations, fires or carbon monoxide incidents by city or ZIP, so there are no local figures on this page — only the rules and their sources. The detailed Massachusetts rules — which alarm types are “approved,” where exactly they go in each building class, and when an old alarm must be replaced — are in the fire-prevention regulations (527 CMR 1.00) and the building code (780 CMR), neither of which could be read from a source we could fetch; this page states the statutes and the sanitary code and does not guess at the regulations. Lynn's own ordinances could not be read either (the codified ordinances sit behind a bot wall). Where the page says a rule is silent, that is a statement about the text we read, not a promise that no other rule exists.

Where an alarm problem usually goes next

A missing or dead alarm is a code condition, so the route to getting it fixed — the written notice, the inspection request, and the remedies at today's rents — is on the repairs page; if the alarm is going off because a heating appliance is the problem, the utilities page covers who pays when the heat or the gas is at issue; the landlord's visit to replace one is an entry event with notice rules of its own; and a fire is the case renters insurance exists for — the renters-insurance page covers what a policy pays and what a lease may demand. If the building's economics are the real problem, each Lynn ZIP's current average (01905, 01901, 01902) says what moving costs instead.

Page last updated October 11, 2026 · rent index data through August 2026.