Landlord HVAC responsibilities in Ontario begin with one sentence in the Residential Tenancies Act: the landlord is responsible for providing and maintaining the rental unit in a good state of repair and fit for habitation, and for complying with health, safety, housing and maintenance standards. That covers the furnace, the ductwork, the water heater and any air conditioning that came with the unit. It applies whether or not the tenant knew about a problem before signing, and a lease clause cannot sign it away.
What follows is a contractor's plain-language summary, not legal advice. Where a situation is contested, the Landlord and Tenant Board is the authority on the Act, and your municipality's property standards office enforces the local by-law.
Heat Is a Vital Service; Air Conditioning Is Not
Heat has statutory protection and cooling does not. Under the Residential Tenancies Act, heat during the heating season sits alongside fuel, electricity and hot and cold water as a vital service, and a landlord must not withhold it or deliberately interfere with its reasonable supply. Nothing in Ontario law requires a landlord to provide air conditioning in the first place.
That changes once cooling is part of the tenancy. If a central system, a landlord-supplied wall unit or cooling included in the rent formed part of the deal, it is a service the landlord provides and must maintain, and discontinuing it is a separate matter with its own remedies at the Board. Recent amendments to the Act also give tenants a limited right to install their own air conditioner in certain circumstances, with notice requirements and conditions attached — confirm the current wording with the Landlord and Tenant Board before either side relies on it.
The Minimum Temperature Depends on Your Municipality
Check the local property standards by-law first, because it governs. The City of Burlington, the Town of Oakville and the City of Hamilton each maintain a property standards by-law that sets the minimum indoor temperature a rental must be capable of holding and the calendar period during which it applies. Where a municipality has no such by-law, Ontario's maintenance standards regulation applies instead and sets a minimum of 20°C from September 1 to June 15.
Do not borrow the number from a friend's building in another city, because the temperature and the dates genuinely differ between municipalities. Call the by-law or property standards line for the municipality the unit actually sits in, or read the by-law on the municipal website.
Smoke and Carbon Monoxide Alarms Are Squarely the Landlord's
Installing them, maintaining them and testing them is the landlord's obligation under the Ontario Fire Code, and the tenant's obligation is not to disable them. In any home with a fuel-burning appliance or an attached garage, carbon monoxide alarms are required adjacent to sleeping areas. In rented units the landlord must supply the alarms, keep them working, test them annually and at every change of tenancy, and give the tenant the manufacturer's maintenance instructions.
This is not paperwork in older rental stock. Pre-war brick doubles through Hamilton's Durand and Corktown, and converted 1950s bungalows around Aldershot, commonly put a gas furnace and a gas water heater in a shared basement with sleeping rooms directly above. Ontario's carbon monoxide detector law sets out where the alarms belong and who is accountable for them.
Who Changes the Filter, and What a Lease Can Actually Cover
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A lease can allocate small routine tasks; it cannot transfer the repair obligation. Filters, thermostat batteries and keeping registers unobstructed are reasonable items to place on a tenant in the additional-terms section of the Ontario standard lease, and most tenants are happy to handle them. Anything requiring a licensed technician stays with the landlord regardless of what the lease says.
- Landlord: annual furnace service, repairs, replacement, all gas and refrigerant work, alarms, ductwork, and the water heater or the rental contract attached to it.
- Tenant: filters where the lease says so, ordinary cleanliness, not blocking registers or the outdoor condenser, and reporting problems promptly and in writing.
- Tenant, always: repairing undue damage caused by them or their guests — a smashed thermostat is not a maintenance item.
- Worth writing down before the tenancy starts: who pays the gas and hydro accounts, and who calls whom outside business hours.
- Also worth writing down: whether the tenant may adjust dampers, humidistats or the outdoor unit at all.
Entry, Notice and Emergencies
24 hours of written notice, between 8 a.m. and 8 p.m., for scheduled maintenance — with an emergency exception. The Act allows entry without notice in an emergency, and a no-heat call in February or a suspected gas leak is an emergency by any reading of it. The notice has to state the reason and the time, and sometime Tuesday is not a time.
For landlords, the practical version is: send the notice, book a window with the contractor and give the tenant the technician's name. For tenants, letting a licensed technician in promptly is in your own interest, because a furnace that gets serviced is the furnace that does not quit on the coldest night of the year.
When the Heat Fails and Nothing Happens
- Report it in writing — text or email is fine — and keep the timestamp. Verbal reports turn into disputes about what was said and when.
- Give a reasonable opportunity to fix it. On a no-heat call in winter, reasonable means the same day.
- If nothing happens, call the municipality's property standards or by-law enforcement line. An officer can inspect and issue an order, and that order becomes evidence.
- Applications to the Landlord and Tenant Board are the formal route: a maintenance application where repairs are not being made, and a separate application where a vital service has been withheld or interfered with.
- Do not stop paying rent. Withholding rent creates a second problem without solving the first, and the Board is the mechanism that exists for this.
- If you smell gas, leave the building first and call from outside — what to do if you smell gas sets out the order.
The Owner's Own Interest: Records and Red Tags
Documentation is what protects a landlord. A licensed technician who finds an unsafe condition on a gas appliance is obliged to tag it, and an immediate-hazard tag means the appliance is shut down on the spot. In a tenanted unit in January that becomes an emergency replacement at whatever the market will bear, plus a tenant with a very strong file.
An annual tune-up at $120–$250 and a folder of dated invoices is far cheaper insurance than that outcome, and the service history is the first thing an insurer asks for after a claim. Owners with several units usually end up on a scheduled plan for exactly this reason, and maintenance plans bundle the fall furnace visit with the spring cooling visit and keep the paperwork in one place.
We work on rental properties across Burlington, Oakville and Hamilton, from furnace repair in Burlington through to full replacements, and we are used to coordinating access directly with tenants when the owner is not local. If you own a unit and want the heating system looked at before the season turns, get in touch. If you are a tenant, ask your landlord to call us — we cannot take instructions on somebody else's equipment.
Frequently asked questions
Does a landlord have to provide air conditioning in Ontario?
No. Ontario law does not require air conditioning to be supplied. However, if cooling was part of the tenancy — a central system, a landlord-supplied unit, or cooling included in the rent — the landlord must maintain it, and removing a service that formed part of the tenancy is a separate issue that the Landlord and Tenant Board handles.
What temperature must a landlord keep a rental at in Ontario?
It is set by your municipality's property standards by-law, and both the temperature and the date range vary. Where a municipality has no by-law, Ontario's maintenance standards regulation applies and requires a minimum of 20°C from September 1 to June 15. Call the local by-law office for the number that applies to your address.
Who is responsible for changing the furnace filter in a rental?
Whoever the lease says, and if the lease is silent it falls back to the landlord as part of maintaining the unit. Putting filters on the tenant is common and reasonable, but it does not shift responsibility for the furnace itself. Landlords who rely on tenants for filters should still verify the filter at the annual service visit.
Can a tenant hire an HVAC company and deduct it from the rent?
Not unilaterally. The Residential Tenancies Act does not give tenants a self-help repair-and-deduct right, and withholding rent creates a separate problem. The Landlord and Tenant Board can, however, order repairs and in some circumstances authorize a tenant to arrange work and deduct the cost, so the Board is the route rather than the invoice.
How much notice does a landlord need to give for a furnace tune-up?
24 hours in writing, stating the reason and the time of entry, with entry between 8 a.m. and 8 p.m. Emergencies are the exception and allow entry without notice — a gas leak, a no-heat call in winter, or water pouring out of the mechanical room all qualify.