Two public city files cover the boiler in a New York City building. The annual inspection report sits in the DOB NOW: Safety Boiler dataset on NYC Open Data, dataset id 52dp-yji6, which held 889,047 filings on October 2, 2026. The violation the Department of Buildings issues when that report never arrives sits elsewhere, in DOB Safety Violations, id 855j-jady, and in the DOB NOW Public Portal, searchable by address or BIN with no account.
Heat season began on October 1. For a building you are about to rent, read the 2025 cycle filing: the 2026 cycle runs to December 31 and most owners have not finished it.
The Two Boiler Records
One file records inspections that happened. The other records inspections that did not. A clean filing history can still sit alongside an old unpaid violation, and a building with no violation may have skipped a cycle DOB has not caught up with.
The Annual Inspection Filing
Dataset 52dp-yji6 holds one row per compliance filing, covering 116,561 boiler devices in 84,277 buildings across its whole run. DOB describes it as "annual compliance filings for high and low pressure boilers installed in buildings" and refreshes it daily. Each row names the inspection date, whether defects were found, the filer's license type, the boiler make and model, and the filing's status.
The Violation for Not Filing
Boiler is the largest device type in dataset 855j-jady at 443,829 rows, 335,855 of them Active on October 2, 2026 across 54,739 buildings. The codes name the duty missed: LBLVIO for a failure to file a low pressure annual inspection, HBLVIO for high pressure, FTC-BE-EXT-LP for a missing affirmation that defects were corrected. DOB has said boiler violations issued from November 2023 onward "can only be viewed in DOB NOW: Safety and will not be available in BIS", the older Buildings Information System.
Finding the Building Identification Number
The filings file has no address. Its columns carry a tracking number, a boiler ID, dates, statuses and a BIN, so an address search returns nothing. You need the seven-digit Building Identification Number first.
Two routes get you one. The DOB NOW Public Portal takes an address, a borough-block-lot or a BIN and returns a property profile, and its device search covers boilers. HPD's Multiple Dwelling Registrations file pairs house number, street and zip with a BIN for 201,067 buildings, an address-to-BIN lookup for any registered residential building. Then filter the BIN column on the Open Data page and sort by inspection date. To skip the number, search the building by address and read the boiler record beside the rest of what the city holds.
The Legal Duty Behind a Boiler Filing
DOB's rule for low pressure boilers, 1 RCNY 103-01, implements Article 303 of Title 28 of the Administrative Code and sets the cycle, the deadline and the penalties.
The Buildings Inside the Duty
DOB requires an annual inspection and a filed report for H-stamped and E-stamped boilers in residential buildings with six or more families, in commercial and mixed-use buildings regardless of BTU capacity, and in any single room occupancy dwelling. Buildings with five families or fewer fall outside the duty, so an empty record for a four-unit brownstone is expected.
The cycle is the calendar year, and reports are due within fourteen calendar days of the inspection. DOB spells out the edge case: an inspection performed on December 31 must reach DOB no later than January 14. After that the report is expired, the owner faces a failure-to-file penalty of at least $1,000 per boiler, and the cycle needs a fresh inspection. A report filed late but inside the window costs $50 a month per boiler, capped at $600.
Qualified Boiler Inspectors
The owner hires the inspector, and DOB limits who qualifies: an insurance company inspector certified by the State Department of Labor, a licensed high pressure boiler operating engineer, an oil burning equipment installer, or a master plumber. High pressure boilers need two inspections a cycle, internal and external, about six months apart, and only an authorized insurance company may perform them.
The Correction Clock After a Defect
When an inspection finds defects, the owner has 90 days from the initial inspection date to correct them, then fourteen days from the follow-up inspection to file the subsequent report. An affirmation filed more than 104 calendar days after the initial inspection gets rejected as expired, and failing to file it costs $1,000 per boiler.
Field Definitions Worth Knowing
The dataset ships a data dictionary written in September 2017 and never revised. Several definitions no longer match the file.
| Field | What the 2017 dictionary says | What the file holds now |
|---|---|---|
| Defects Exist | "true = Defects were found; false = Defects were not found" | Yes on 70,137 rows, No on 816,177, blank on 2,733. Filtering for true returns nothing |
| Report Status | Four values: Pre-Filing, QA Review, Rejected, Accepted | 21 distinct values, including Accepted – Civil Penalties Due and both Pre-filing and Pre-Filing as separate spellings |
| LFF (45 Days) | Reports filed more than 45 days after the inspection date count as late filings | A dollar amount, zero on 871,273 rows. DOB cut the deadline to 14 days on January 24, 2022 |
DOB's notice on that last change is explicit: "14 days to file after inspection date (was previously 45 days)" and "104 days to correct, inspect, and file after initial inspection date (was previously 180 days)". Pages quoting a 45-day or 180-day clock are reading a dictionary DOB left behind four years ago. Inspection Type separates an external inspection, defined as one "performed by an inspector hired by the building owner", from an internal one by DOB staff, and 874,147 of the rows are external.
The Shape of an Ordinary Cycle
These figures come from the city's own housing data, filtered on the inspection date field and pulled on October 2, 2026. Both agencies backfill, so a count for a fixed window keeps climbing.
- 98,584 filings carry a 2025 inspection date, covering 94,477 boilers in 71,509 buildings.
- 6,450 of the 95,593 initial filings for 2025 record a defect, which is 6.75%.
- 97,357 of the 2025 filings read Accepted, so any other status is worth a look.
- December is the heaviest inspection month, 12,743 initial inspections against 6,036 in August.
- 4,584 buildings that filed for 2024 have no 2025 filing, 6.5% of them. Among buildings in HPD's registration file the drop-off is 2,976 of 53,082, or 5.6%.
- On October 2 the 2026 cycle held 68,430 filings across 48,971 buildings, leaving 24,361 of last year's buildings, 34.1%, with no 2026 filing and no deadline missed.
DOB issues boiler violations in batches: 24,545 carried a 2025 date, hitting 18,931 buildings, and the newest in the file was issued on December 15, 2025. None carried a 2026 date on October 2, so the violations file lags the filings file by most of a year.
Boiler Defects and Winter Heat Violations
A defect recorded in October matters to a renter only if it predicts a cold January, so we measured whether it does. We took every building with an initial filing inspected between January 1 and September 30, 2025, matched those BINs to HPD's registration file, and counted HPD heat violations under sections 27-2028 and 27-2029 at those buildings over the 2025-26 heat season.
Of 2,795 buildings whose pre-season filing recorded a defect, 324 picked up a heat violation that winter. Of 36,281 whose filing recorded no defect, 2,167 did, 6.0%. The defect group was close to twice as likely to end up with a confirmed heat failure, and the gap is too large to be sampling noise.
Read that as an association rather than a cause. Buildings with defective boilers also tend to be older and maintained worse across the board, so the flag partly stands in for building condition. The outcome has its own filter: an HPD heat violation needs a tenant to call it in and an inspector to confirm it, so quiet buildings with cold apartments never enter the count. 311 heat complaints capture more of them, and the heat season temperature rules set the floor the inspector measures against.
Limits of the Record
A filing is a filing. It records that an inspector the owner hired signed a report, not that the boiler will hold through February. One row says less than a run of them, and reading the pattern across cycles is a different task from finding the record.
The file is keyed on the device, so a building with four boilers produces four rows a year and one bad device can hide among good ones. A clean filing says nothing about distribution either: the boiler runs, and the top floor stays cold. And these are DOB violations, kept apart from the HPD file that records the cold apartment.
Frequently Asked Questions
Where do NYC boiler inspection reports get filed?
In DOB NOW: Safety, DOB's online filing system. The public copy appears daily in the DOB NOW: Safety Boiler dataset on NYC Open Data, id 52dp-yji6. Boiler violations sit separately, in DOB Safety Violations, id 855j-jady, and in the DOB NOW Public Portal. Those issued from November 2023 onward are in DOB NOW only.
How often does a NYC boiler have to be inspected?
Once per calendar year for low pressure boilers, with the report due within fourteen calendar days of the inspection. High pressure boilers need two inspections in the same cycle, internal and external, about six months apart. The cycle runs January 1 to December 31, and a December 31 inspection must reach DOB by January 14.
Who is allowed to inspect a boiler in NYC?
For low pressure boilers, a qualified installer licensed by DOB or an authorized boiler insurance company. DOB's definition covers a State Department of Labor certificate holder employed by an insurer, a licensed high pressure boiler operating engineer, a class A or B oil burning equipment installer, a master plumber, or a supervised journeyman plumber. High pressure work goes to the insurer.
Do small buildings have to file a boiler inspection report?
No. DOB exempts boilers in residential buildings with five families or fewer, and a single boiler inside one dwelling unit heating only that unit. Six or more families brings the duty, as does any commercial or mixed-use building regardless of BTU capacity, and any single room occupancy dwelling.
Does a boiler filing with no defects mean the heat will work?
No. An external inspection happens on one day of the year, by an inspector the owner hired, and it checks the device rather than whether heat reaches your radiator. Buildings whose pre-season 2025 filing was clean still drew a confirmed heat violation 6.0% of the time last season. A clean filing lowers the odds without removing them.
Need help with your apartment?
Tell us what you need and get free quotes from local NYC pros.