Plumbing Contractor License in Delaware: Requirements, Qualifier, Bond and Exams

Statewide — but the Board offers no separate contractor class to apply for.

The Board of Plumbing, Heating, Ventilation, Air Conditioning and Refrigeration Examiners, part of the Delaware Division of Professional Regulation, licenses plumbing work across the state, and it issues master-level licenses only: Master Plumber, Master HVACR and Master HVACR Restricted.

The Master Plumber license is itself the practice license a plumbing business runs on — the Board has no separate company-level plumbing contractor license.

What Delaware law requires of your business instead is structure: only a licensed master plumber may provide plumbing services, and apprentices and journeymen may work unlicensed only under the supervision of a master plumber who employs them or works full time for the same business.

Business-level licensing is a separate question this page does not answer: the Delaware Division of Revenue's business licence requirements for contractors sit outside our research, so confirm them with the Division directly.

The stakes are real: unlicensed plumbing carries a fine of $1,500-$3,000 for a first offense and $3,000-$6,000 for later offenses.

The issuing agency is the Board of Plumbing, Heating, Ventilation, Air Conditioning and Refrigeration Examiners, within the Delaware Division of Professional Regulation.

For a plumbing business the class list is one line: Master Plumber is the only plumbing license the Board issues, and it is the license your company operates under — the Board offers no separate contractor tier.

There is no journeyman class for your crew to hold, either: the Board licenses plumbing at the master level only, and the journeyman certificate from an apprenticeship that meets federal standards is an eligibility prerequisite on one of the two routes to the master license, not a Board license in its own right.

Delaware's version of a qualifier is the master plumber on staff.

The rule your business has to satisfy is structural: an apprentice, journeyman, mechanic or other person may provide plumbing services only under the supervision of a master plumber who is that person's employer or who is employed full time by the same business entity.

To be that person, an applicant qualifies for the Master Plumber license with a journeyman certificate from an apprenticeship that meets federal standards plus 2 years under a master plumber, or with 7 years performing plumbing services under a master plumber — or under a plumber holding a similar level of licensure in another state — plus the apprenticeship equivalency test at a Delaware vocational-technical school, and then passes the master exam.

The master exam is the trade exam your qualifier must pass, and the Board delivers its Plumbing & HVACR licensure examinations through its testing vendor, ProV — in person in Wilmington, Newark or Dover, or remotely via ExamRoom.

The apprenticeship equivalency by-pass exam is a separate test for applicants on the 7-year route: the statute places it with a Delaware vocational-technical school, and the Board's examinations page names Associated Builders and Contractors Delaware (ABC Delaware) as the vendor that administers it.

Our research names no separate business-and-law exam for Delaware Master Plumber applicants, so ask the Board what the current master exam covers before you book.

Our research did not find a bond requirement or liability-insurance minimums for Delaware master plumbers in the Board pages or the Delaware Code sections we read.

Treat that as a gap in our research, not a rule — requirements change, and the Board is the place to confirm what it expects before you sign contracts.

Business-level licensing through the Delaware Division of Revenue, and any bond it may require of contractors, were also outside our research — check with the Division as well as the Board.

The Board's fee schedule lists a $173 application fee for each master license — Master Plumber, Master HVACR and Master Restricted HVACR — plus $40 for a temporary license.

Licenses renew biennially, with proof of any Board-required continuing education: the Board's rules set 5 hours per renewal after your first renewal, more if you hold dual licenses, with the first renewal's hours prorated.

Renewing late adds 50% of the renewal fee.

The renewal fee amount itself was not in the pages we read, so check the Board's current fee schedule when you budget.

The Board pages and rules we read name no plumbing reciprocity agreement between Delaware and another state, and how the Board treats another state's master plumber license was not covered in what we read — ask the Board before you count an out-of-state license toward Delaware's requirements.

The one out-of-state element our research did find sits inside the experience route, not reciprocity: an applicant can reach the 7-years threshold with plumbing services performed under a master plumber or a plumber holding a similar level of licensure in another state, and then passes the apprenticeship equivalency test like any other applicant on that route.

Your authority to put unlicensed plumbers to work lives in one place: the supervision of a master plumber who is their employer or works full time for the same business.

If that person leaves, the condition Delaware attaches to unlicensed plumbing work fails — apprentices and journeymen may provide plumbing services only under that supervising master, so the exemption they were working under no longer applies, and unlicensed plumbing carries a fine of $1,500-$3,000 for a first offense and $3,000-$6,000 for later offenses.

The Board pages and Code sections we read set no notification requirement and no replacement deadline for naming a new master, so how quickly that has to happen was not established in our research — ask the Board, and start recruiting the next qualifier before the current one gives notice.