Service Areas: Where This Guidance Applies
Does the guidance on this site reach the house a reader owns in northeastern Massachusetts? The method does, and so do the state rules that apply across the region. A town's own permit decisions do not, and this page says so rather than writing around them.
Whether this guidance reaches your town
The guidance is written with the towns below in view, all of them in the Merrimack Valley or northern Middlesex County: Andover, Billerica, Burlington, Chelmsford, Dracut, Lowell, Methuen, North Andover, North Reading, Reading, Tewksbury and Wilmington. Living in one of them does not change the facts on this site, and living outside them does not change the method. What differs from town to town is how the local building department applies the state rules to a particular job. We checked each figure below against its source and say where a source stops, so a reader can see which parts are general and which depend on a town.
A permit question goes to the building department
Massachusetts towns apply the state building code's general rule that altering or repairing a building needs a permit, with ordinary repairs exempt. The Town of Dracut's Building Permits page states that general rule in its own words, saying a permit is required to alter or repair a building or structure. The same page does not say whether re-roofing, siding or window work counts as an ordinary repair, so the general rule does not answer the question for a given job. That is why a reader should ask the building department of their own town before roofing, siding or window work starts.
Two towns can apply the same state rule to the same kind of job and reach different answers. The building department is the only office that can say which answer applies to a particular house.
What stays the same at every town line
Some rules are state rules, so they do not change when a reader crosses a town line. For an owner-occupied home of one to four units in Massachusetts, a home improvement contract has to be in writing, carry the contractor's registration number, and state a scheduled completion date. The deposit is capped at one-third of the total contract price, with an exception for certain special-order materials, under General Laws Chapter 142A, Section 2. Those three items are the ones a reader can check on paper before any work starts: the registration number, the completion date and the deposit figure. A contract that leaves any of them out tells the reader something about the contractor before any work has begun. The signed contract is also the reader's record if the work goes wrong, so a missing item is a gap in that record.
Four figures to check a house against
None of these four figures is a price for a particular job. Each one is a check a reader can run against their own house. The building department can say whether the local rule differs from the model text.
- 24 in.
- How far the ice barrier under the shingles should reach inside the exterior wall line, under the model residential code (IRC R905.1.2). One 3-foot roll at the eave usually falls short.
- Source: Ice-Dam Protection: How Far Up the Roof Slope? (Fine Homebuilding). The Massachusetts amendment could not be checked for this page.
- 1:150
- Net free vent area to attic floor area under the model residential code (IRC R806.2). On a 1,500 square foot attic floor that works out to 10 square feet of net free vent.
- Source: Calculating Attic Ventilation (Journal of Light Construction). Any Massachusetts amendment was not confirmed.
- R-38
- The least ceiling insulation UMass recommends for houses in the northern United States, laid continuous and evenly deep. Treat it as a floor, not a target.
- Source: Preventing Ice Dams (UMass Amherst Building and Construction Technology), an article archived from 2011 that says some of its information may be outdated.
- $25,000
- The ceiling on a Guaranty Fund payment to one claimant after an arbitration award or judgment against a contractor who does not pay. The fund pays only an owner who signed a written contract with a registered contractor.
- Source: 201 CMR 14.21, Payments from the Guaranty Fund. Older regulation text shows $10,000; the current text says $25,000.
Ordinary houses, and the parts a reader can check
Where readers get stuck on whether this applies
A town that is not on the list
The list names the towns this guidance is written with in view, and a town outside it in the same region is not excluded. The general method and the state rules above still apply in any town in the region. The local building department decides the permit question for every town, whether or not it is on the list.
Snow loads for a town
Snow loads for individual towns were not sourced for this site, so this page gives none. A town's snow figure bears on how a roof is built and how much winter load it is expected to carry. The building department can give the figure for a particular address, and it is worth asking for before a roof replacement is quoted. The insulation and ventilation figures above are the floor an attic is checked against, and they say nothing about how much snow a roof can carry.
Older houses
Older houses are the usual reason to check the attic figures, because an attic insulated or vented to an earlier standard may fall short of the numbers above. A reader finds out by looking at the attic floor and the vents from inside, not by reading this page. What the reader finds is a starting point for a conversation with whoever inspects or quotes the work.
Buildings that are not one to four homes
The state contract rule covers owner-occupied homes of one to four units. Apartment buildings and commercial roofs fall outside it, and this page does not cover them. Commercial work has its own questions, which a reader should put to the contractor and the building department directly.
Who answers what
The building department answers the permit question, and the contractor supplies the registration number and completion date the contract rule requires. A lender or an insurer answers the financing and coverage questions, which this site does not answer. Asking each of them the right question first saves a reader from a wrong answer later.