The NC Plumbing, Heating and Fire Sprinkler Board

This page describes the board; it is not the board’s own. The State Board of Examiners of Plumbing, Heating, and Fire Sprinkler Contractors licenses plumbing, the three heating groups and fire sprinkler work. It has seven members, all appointed by the Governor, and four seats are reserved for named trades — including a separate seat for air conditioning, named apart from both plumbing and heating.

Terms run seven years, with one expiring each year, and no member appointed since 1979 may serve more than one complete consecutive term.

The seven seats

G.S. 87-16 creates the Board and allocates every place:

There is created the State Board of Examiners of Plumbing, Heating, and Fire Sprinkler Contractors consisting of seven members appointed by the Governor: one member from a school of engineering of the Greater University of North Carolina, one member who is a plumbing or mechanical inspector from a city in North Carolina, one licensed air conditioning contractor, one licensed plumbing contractor, one licensed heating contractor, one licensed fire sprinkler contractor, and one person who has no tie with the construction industry to represent the interests of the public at large.

Four trade seats, each for a licensed practitioner of that trade: air conditioning, plumbing, heating, fire sprinkler. One engineering academic. One municipal plumbing or mechanical inspector. One public member with no tie to the construction industry (G.S. 87-16).

Rotation is built in. The same section provides that “Members serve for terms of seven years, with the term of one member expiring each year”, and that “No member appointed after June 7, 1979, shall serve more than one complete consecutive term.”

Why the air conditioning seat matters

It is easy to read this board as a plumbing board that also does heating. Its own constituting statute says otherwise: air conditioning has a seat of its own, separate from both plumbing and heating (G.S. 87-16).

That matches how the licensing provisions are drawn. G.S. 87-21(a)(5) lists “plumbing, heating group number one, or heating group number two, or heating group number three” and fire sprinkler as distinct things a license may cover, “or any combination thereof” — so a licensee may hold one, several, or all. Which group covers which system is at which heating group covers which system.

What it licenses

The Board’s jurisdiction runs to the activities in G.S. 87-21(a)(5) — verifying, inspecting, evaluating, testing, installing, altering and restoring plumbing, the heating groups and fire sprinklers, and offering to do any of them, for valuable consideration.

Two features of that scope are worth stating plainly because they differ from the general contractor model. There is no dollar threshold — the requirement attaches to the activity, not to the value of the job. And inspection and testing are licensed activities in their own right, not only installation.

What a plumbing license covers on its own is at what a plumbing license covers.

Fees and the renewal cycle

G.S. 87-22 sets fees as ceilings. Plumbing or heating contracting carries “an annual license fee not to exceed one hundred fifty dollars ($150.00)”, a piping or restricted classification license “shall not exceed that for a plumbing or heating license”, and fire sprinkler contracting carries “an initial application fee not to exceed seventy-five dollars ($75.00) and an annual license fee not to exceed three hundred dollars ($300.00).”

Each of those is a maximum, not a charge, and the current amounts are the Board’s to publish. The renewal date is flat: all licenses “expire on the last day of December in each year following their issuance or renewal” (G.S. 87-22).

The statute also puts a duty on the Board to warn licensees before that date — its secretary and treasurer must send notice “at least one month in advance of the expiration of the license” (G.S. 87-22).

The other two boards

North Carolina splits construction licensing across separate boards under separate Articles of the same chapter, and they are constituted differently:

• The general contractors’ board — nine members, all appointed by the Governor, five-year terms, up to two complete consecutive terms (G.S. 87-2). See the general contractors’ board.
• The electrical board — seven members, but only five appointed by the Governor, seven-year terms, and no consecutive complete terms at all (G.S. 87-39). See the electrical board.
• This board — seven members, all appointed by the Governor, seven-year terms, and one complete consecutive term for members appointed after June 7, 1979 (G.S. 87-16).

How this board’s jurisdiction meets the general contractors’ on a single project is at how this board sits against a contractor license, and its public license record is at searching its license record.

This site is not affiliated with any licensing board and cannot act for you with one. Contact details and current fees are published on the Board’s own site. For the licensing system as a whole, start at the main licensing guide.