Georgia · HVAC licensing · official-source guide
Georgia licenses HVAC contracting at the state level through the Georgia State Board of Conditioned Air Contractors under the Secretary of State. Two classes exist: Class I Restricted, capped at 175,000 BTU heating and 60,000 BTU cooling, and Class II Unrestricted for everything above that. Applicants need 4 to 5 years of documented experience, EPA refrigerant certification, and a passing score of 70 on the licensing exam.
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Verify a licenseVerified against agency sources on 2026-09-12. Rules and fees change; confirm with the named authority before relying on this guide.
Georgia licenses HVAC contracting at the state level through the Georgia State Board of Conditioned Air Contractors, a division of the State Construction Industry Licensing Board housed inside the Georgia Secretary of State's Professional Licensing Boards Division. The Georgia Administrative Code lists this board under Department 121, titled State Construction Industry Licensing Board, alongside the divisions for electrical contractors, plumbers, low-voltage contractors, and utility contractors. The statutory basis sits in the Official Code of Georgia Annotated, Title 43, Chapter 14, covering Electrical Contractors, Plumbers, Conditioned Air Contractors, Low-Voltage Contractors, and Utility Contractors. This is a dedicated trade board, not a general contractor board. A person who installs, services, or repairs conditioned air systems in Georgia for pay falls under this board's rules rather than under the state's separate Residential and General Contractor board. The board approves applications, sets and publishes fees, administers or approves the licensing exam through a third-party testing vendor, tracks continuing education, and handles discipline for unprofessional conduct. Georgia issues the license itself, and no city or county in the state runs a parallel HVAC trade-licensing exam or issues its own conditioned air contractor credential. Local governments still control permits and inspections on jobs performed inside their limits, which is a separate requirement from holding the state license. A contractor working in more than one Georgia city or county carries the same single state license into every jurisdiction; only the local permit process changes from one city to the next. Applicants and the public both work through the same online systems the Secretary of State's office runs for every professional board it houses: the how-to guide, forms, board rules and FAQ pages, and the GOALS licensee-search portal for lookups.
Georgia's Conditioned Air Contractor license comes in two classes, defined in Rule 121-3-.04 of the Georgia Administrative Code. Class I is a Restricted license, limited to conditioned air systems or equipment that do not exceed 175,000 BTU of heating and 60,000 BTU of cooling. Class II is Non-restricted, sometimes called Unrestricted, and covers systems above that threshold as well as everything a Class I license covers. The BTU cap is calculated per installation. The rule states that for classifying systems, each complete system in a single installation counts as an individual job, so a contractor cannot combine several smaller residential systems installed on the same day to argue they add up to a Class II job, and cannot split one large commercial system into smaller pieces to stay under Class I. In practice, Class I fits a residential-scale HVAC business: furnaces, residential split systems, and light commercial equipment under the BTU line. Class II fits contractors bidding commercial and industrial work, larger multi-zone commercial systems, and anything above the Class I ceiling. Many established Georgia HVAC contracting businesses hold Class II specifically so a single license covers every job size without checking BTU ratings against the Class I cap before every bid. The business itself is registered under a qualifying licensee's number, and Rule 121-3-.05 requires that number to display an identifying prefix, CN or CR, ahead of the digits, written as GA. REG. followed by the prefix and license number. The rule text does not spell out which prefix belongs to which class, so a contractor should confirm its own prefix from the license certificate the Board issues rather than assume.
Georgia requires a Conditioned Air Contractor license for anyone who contracts to install, alter, repair, or service conditioned air systems or equipment for compensation, at the scale defined by Class I or Class II. The how-to guide the Board publishes lists certifications an applicant must already hold before applying: EPA refrigerant certification, and completion of a Manuals J and D course covering residential load calculation and duct design, with Manuals N and Q referenced for commercial equivalents. Those manuals come from the Air Conditioning Contractors of America and are the industry-standard method for sizing heating and cooling equipment and designing duct systems, which is why the Board treats them as a prerequisite rather than something learned after licensure. A business, not just an individual, needs a connection to a licensed person. Rule 121-6-.01 requires every sole proprietorship, partnership, or corporation performing conditioned air contracting to have a currently licensed person regularly connected to the business, working full time, providing supervision, and able to respond to problems while work is in progress. That person cannot qualify more than one business at a time, and cannot supervise contracted work during hours spent working for a different employer. This licensing structure means a homeowner cannot legally hire an unlicensed handyman to install or replace ducted heating and cooling equipment and expect the same consumer protections that come with hiring a Board-licensed contractor. It also means a general contractor building a house in Georgia must subcontract the HVAC scope to a Class I or Class II Conditioned Air Contractor rather than performing that work under a general contractor license alone.
Rule 121-3-.04 sets separate experience minimums for each class. A Class I Restricted applicant must document at least 4 years of conditioned air work experience of a type covered by the Georgia Heating and Air Conditioning Code. A Class II Non-restricted applicant must document at least 5 years, including installation experience on systems that exceed the Class I BTU thresholds. The rule breaks that experience down further. For Class I, the Board looks for 2 years of residential installation experience as a lead mechanic, 1 year as a service technician, evidence of EPA certification, 1 year of residential supervisory experience, and completion of a Board-approved heat loss and gain and duct design course. For Class II, it looks for 2 years of installation experience as a lead mechanic with at least 1 of those years on commercial work only, 1 year as a service technician or service supervisor, EPA certification, 2 years of commercial supervisory experience, and the same Board-approved design course. Formal education can substitute for part of that experience. A technical school diploma in engineering or engineering technology can count for up to 2 years of the experience requirement, and a vocational-technical school certificate program can count for up to 1 year. Neither fully replaces the hands-on years; both only offset part of the total. Every applicant must also submit 3 references on the Board's required form, each from an architect, professional engineer, inspector, or already-licensed Conditioned Air Contractor who lists their own registration or license number on the form. Experience the rule does not explicitly cover is classified by the Board itself, and that classification is final except that an applicant may ask to appear before the Board to explain unusual experience.
Sourcesrules.sos.ga.gov
An applicant must obtain a minimum score of 70 on the appropriate examination before the Board will issue a Class I or Class II Conditioned Air Contractor license, under Rule 121-3-.04. Before sitting for the exam, an applicant needs Board approval, which follows a completed application, the required references, and documentation of the experience minimum for the class being sought. The Board's own FAQ page states the exam is administered through PSI, a third-party licensing exam provider used across many state licensing boards. That page also describes what happens after a failed attempt: an applicant who fails the exam twice must submit a certificate of completion for a Board-approved review course before the Board will allow another attempt. Georgia's rules address this same process in a chapter section titled Review Course for Re-examination, filed under the same chapter that governs statewide license applications generally, which lines up with what the FAQ describes. The Board keeps a candidate's application and examination information confidential once submitted, a protection covered by a separate confidentiality rule in that chapter rather than a rule specific to conditioned air. None of the sources reviewed for this page state the exam's length, question count, specific content outline by class, or the exact fee PSI charges to sit for it. A contractor preparing to test should get that detail directly from PSI's Georgia conditioned air candidate handbook or from the Board's own application packet rather than assume it matches another state's exam, since exam vendors and content outlines are not standardized across states.
Federal law layers a separate certification requirement on top of Georgia's state license. Under Section 608 of the federal Clean Air Act, EPA regulations at 40 CFR Part 82, Subpart F require any technician who maintains, services, repairs, or disposes of equipment that could release refrigerant into the atmosphere to hold EPA Section 608 Technician Certification. This applies regardless of state, and Georgia's own how-to guide for the Conditioned Air Contractor license lists EPA certification as a document every applicant must already have before the state will approve a license application. EPA defines a technician, for this purpose, as anyone who attaches or detaches hoses and gauges to measure appliance pressure, adds or removes refrigerant, or otherwise does anything that could violate the integrity of a small appliance or a motor-vehicle-air-conditioner-like appliance, aside from disposal. Apprentices are exempt from the certification requirement as long as a certified technician closely and continually supervises them. EPA created 4 separate certification types. Type I covers servicing small appliances. Type II covers servicing or disposing of high- or very-high-pressure appliances other than small appliances and motor vehicle air conditioners. Type III covers low-pressure appliances. Universal certification covers all of the above and requires passing every core and specialty test; EPA specifically requires the core test for Universal certification to be proctored, not taken open-book, even though specialty tests can be open-book. Every certification type requires passing an EPA-approved test administered by an EPA-approved certifying organization, and once earned, a Section 608 credential does not expire. Because Georgia requires this federal certification as a precondition of state licensure, an HVAC contractor operating in Georgia effectively needs both credentials before touching refrigerant on the job: the state Conditioned Air Contractor license to run the business, and Section 608 certification, held by the individual technicians actually handling refrigerant, to work on the equipment legally under federal law.
Sourcesepa.gov 1sos.ga.gov 2
Rule 121-4-.02 states that the Board sets renewal fees, late fees, and reinstatement fees, and that those fees are published in a separate fee schedule made publicly available rather than written into the rule itself. Rule 121-3-.04's application process requires an applicant to pay all fees required by the Board as part of a complete application, alongside the experience documentation, references, and exam score. That live fee schedule is published through the Secretary of State's GOALS OneStop licensing portal rather than as a static page, and this review could not pull exact dollar figures from it; the page loads through a JavaScript-driven system that returned an error rather than fee tables when fetched directly. The exact current dollar amounts are one of the figures this page could not confirm from a primary source, and they are listed in the unsourced section below. What is confirmed is the fee structure itself. Georgia charges a separate application fee at the time a person applies for a Class I or Class II license, a distinct renewal fee due at each 2-year renewal cycle, a late fee for anyone who misses the renewal deadline and still renews within the late window, and a reinstatement fee for anyone whose license has already lapsed and who is bringing it back into good standing. A lapse of more than 3 years pushes the applicant past reinstatement into a full new application, including retaking the licensing exam. A contractor budgeting for a new Georgia HVAC license, or for keeping an existing one current, should check the live fee schedule at the GOALS portal before applying or renewing, since this page cannot state a number that would stay accurate over time without a working primary source to confirm it against.
Sourcesrules.sos.ga.gov 1rules.sos.ga.gov 2goals.sos.ga.gov 3
Georgia's published rules for Conditioned Air Contractors do not set a minimum general liability insurance dollar amount, and do not require a surety bond as a condition of getting or keeping a Class I or Class II license. Rule 121-3-.04, the rule that lays out everything an applicant must do to obtain either class of license, lists a completed application, the experience minimum, 3 references, a passing exam score, and payment of Board fees. Insurance and bonding do not appear anywhere in that list, and none of the other rules this page reviewed, covering business registration, renewal, continuing education, or advertising display, add an insurance or bond requirement either. That is a real difference from how some other states regulate HVAC contractors, and from how Georgia itself regulates some other license types, so a contractor should not assume a bond or insurance minimum exists here just because one exists elsewhere. It also means the state license alone tells a customer nothing about whether a given contractor carries liability coverage. This page could not fetch the underlying statute, Official Code of Georgia Annotated Title 43, Chapter 14, which the Board's rules cite as their legal authority, so it cannot rule out an insurance or bond requirement written into the statute itself rather than into the Board's administrative rules. That gap is listed in the unsourced section below. In practice, most Georgia HVAC contracting businesses still carry general liability insurance and workers compensation coverage as ordinary business practice, because customers, general contractors hiring subcontractors, and local permit offices commonly ask for proof of coverage even where the state license does not itself require it.
Sourcesrules.sos.ga.gov
Georgia renews Conditioned Air Contractor licenses on a 2-year cycle. Rule 121-4-.02 states that licenses are renewed biennially by the expiration date set by the Secretary of State's Professional Licensing Boards Division, and that a license not renewed by that date becomes invalid, meaning the holder is no longer authorized to work in the licensed trade until it is renewed or reinstated. The Board's how-to guide narrows that cycle to a specific date: renewal must be completed online by November 30 of odd-numbered years. The Board's FAQ page places the renewal window itself in September through November of odd years, which is the period a licensee has to actually file before that November 30 deadline. Missing the deadline does not immediately end the license. Rule 121-4-.02 allows a late renewal period, on payment of a published late fee, and beyond that, a reinstatement process for a lapsed license, on payment of a reinstatement fee, at the Board's discretion, which can include conditions or a requirement to retake the exam. Waiting more than 3 years past expiration to seek reinstatement removes the reinstatement option entirely and requires a brand new application, fee, and passing exam score, the same as a first-time applicant. Continuing education runs on the same 2-year clock. Rule 121-4-.03 requires 4 hours of continuing education per year, for a total of 8 hours by the time a 2-year renewal comes due, in subjects tied to conditioned air contracting: safety, technological advances, business management, or government regulations. A licensee in their first year does not need any continuing education yet, and one in their second year needs only the 4 hours from that first full year. Georgia accepts course hours from colleges, vocational-technical schools, trade and professional organizations, public utilities, and equipment manufacturers, but rejects manufacturer courses built to promote the manufacturer's own products. Licensees must keep attendance and completion records for 5 years, and a licensee who also holds a Professional Engineer license is exempt from the continuing education requirement altogether, per the Board's FAQ.
Sourcesrules.sos.ga.gov 1rules.sos.ga.gov 2sos.ga.gov 3sos.ga.gov 4
Georgia does not currently offer reciprocity for Conditioned Air Contractor licenses held in other states, even though its own rules include a mechanism for it. Rule 121-2-.03 lets a Division enter into a formal written agreement with another state's licensing board to grant a license by endorsement or reciprocity, provided that other state's exam and requirements are substantially equal to Georgia's own, and provided that state extends the same privilege back to Georgia licensees. The Board's own FAQ page states plainly that reciprocity with other states is not offered at this time, which means no such agreement currently covers conditioned air contracting specifically. Rule 121-2-.03 also lets the Board deny a license under this pathway if an applicant appears to be trying to get around Georgia's own requirements by first becoming licensed in another state, or if the applicant has already faced discipline in the state where they are licensed, or has committed an act that would count as grounds for discipline here. A person licensed only under a grandfather provision, without ever passing an exam that would qualify under this rule, cannot use this pathway at all. In practical terms, a contractor relocating a business to Georgia, or bidding work there from a nearby state such as South Carolina, Alabama, Tennessee, Florida, or North Carolina, needs to start the Georgia application process from the beginning: submit the application, document 4 years of experience for Class I or 5 years for Class II, gather 3 qualifying references, hold EPA certification and the required design course, and pass the Georgia exam with a score of at least 70. An out-of-state license does not shortcut any of those steps for conditioned air contracting today, whatever agreements may exist for Georgia's other licensed construction trades.
Georgia ties every Conditioned Air Contractor license to a specific business through a qualifying-licensee system. Rule 121-6-.01 requires a sole proprietorship, partnership, or corporation doing conditioned air contracting to have a currently licensed person regularly connected to the business, working full time, supervising the work, and able to respond to problems while a job is in progress. That qualifying licensee cannot cover more than one business at a time, and the rule treats a licensee as unable to supervise or respond during any hours spent working for a different employer, so a business cannot rely on that licensee's coverage during those hours. If the qualifying licensee leaves, Rule 121-5-.02 requires the business to notify the Division in writing within 5 days of the severance, and failing to register the qualifying business, or failing to give that 5-day notice, counts as unprofessional conduct the Board can discipline. The same rule lists several other grounds for discipline: violating local ordinances tied to the contracted work, including skipping required local permits and inspections; a pattern of billing substantially more than an original estimate without warning the customer first that the final cost could run over; knowingly charging for unnecessary work; diverting a customer's funds or property away from the specific job they were paid for without that customer's authorization; and failing to disclose, on request, the name and license number of whoever is actually supervising and performing the work. The rule also reaches into a separate area of Georgia law: registering a business under a trade name without registering that name with the Superior Court, as Georgia's trade-name statute requires, or failing to hand over proof of that registration on request, both count as unprofessional conduct under this Board's rules even though the trade-name registration requirement itself comes from a different part of Georgia law.
Georgia requires a Conditioned Air Contractor's business registration number, not just the underlying individual license, to appear in specific places, under Rule 121-3-.05, effective December 1, 2021. That business registration number is the qualifying licensee's license number carrying a CN or CR prefix, displayed as GA. REG. followed by the prefix and number, for example GA. REG. CN-555123 in the rule's own example. Every commercial vehicle a Conditioned Air Contractor uses exclusively in daily business operations must prominently display that registration number on both sides of the vehicle, in characters at least 2 inches high. Any advertisement for conditioned air contracting work that runs in a non-standard telephone yellow-pages listing, a newspaper, or printed material distributed to the public must also prominently and legibly display the number. So must every invoice and proposal form the business uses. The rule does not carve out a separate standard for digital advertising such as a website or social media, and does not state a specific dollar penalty for omitting the number; it only sets the display requirement itself. If the qualifying licensee stops qualifying the business, whether by leaving, losing the license, or any other reason, Rule 121-3-.05 requires the business to stop performing conditioned air contracting entirely until a licensee qualifies it again, and every display of the old registration number has to be updated to the new qualifying licensee's number before work resumes. None of the sources this page reviewed state what a Class I or Class II license permits a contractor to call themselves in marketing, beyond the registration-number display rule, or list specific prohibited advertising wording. A contractor should treat the registration-number rule as the floor, and confirm any additional marketing-language limits directly with the Board rather than assume none exist.
Sourcesrules.sos.ga.gov
Georgia licenses Conditioned Air Contractors entirely at the state level, and none of the sources this page reviewed describe a separate city or county HVAC trade license anywhere in Georgia, including its largest metro areas: Atlanta, Augusta, Columbus, and Savannah. The Board's rules cover the license itself statewide, with a single application, exam, and renewal cycle regardless of where in Georgia the contractor works. That single state license does not replace local permitting. Rule 121-5-.02 lists violating local ordinances tied to contracted work, including failing to obtain the permits and inspections a local ordinance requires, as unprofessional conduct the Board can discipline a licensee for. That rule assumes local permits and inspections apply on top of the state license rather than instead of it, which matches how building departments function across Georgia's cities and counties generally: a licensed Conditioned Air Contractor still pulls a mechanical permit and passes inspection on covered work inside whichever city or county the job sits in, separate from holding the state license. This page could not confirm, from a primary source fetched directly, whether Atlanta, Augusta, Columbus, or Savannah also require a general business license or occupational tax certificate specifically tied to operating an HVAC contracting business inside city limits, on top of standard building permits; several city websites returned access errors during this review. That gap is listed in the unsourced section below. A contractor bidding recurring work in any of Georgia's larger cities should confirm directly with that city's revenue or licensing office whether an occupational tax certificate applies to the business, separate from confirming the mechanical permit process with that city's building department, since permit offices and business-license offices are often different departments with different rules.
Sourcesrules.sos.ga.gov
Georgia maintains a public license lookup through the Secretary of State's GOALS OneStop portal, at the licensee-search page linked from the Conditioned Air Contractors board's own site. A customer, general contractor, or property manager can search that portal to confirm whether a given name or business currently holds an active Class I or Class II Conditioned Air Contractor license, rather than relying on a license number printed on a truck or an invoice without checking it against the state record. Checking the lookup matters specifically because Georgia ties licensure to a qualifying individual rather than only to the business name. A business can display a registration number that was accurate when a previous qualifying licensee worked there, yet that licensee may have already left, under Rule 121-6-.01's rules about severance and the 5-day notice requirement, without the business having updated its displayed number yet. A lookup search confirms whether the license tied to that number is still active and still connected to that business, rather than assuming a printed number on a van settles the question. The same lookup portal is the practical starting point for checking a contractor's license class before signing a contract for large commercial equipment, since a Class I Restricted license does not cover systems above 175,000 BTU of heating or 60,000 BTU of cooling under Rule 121-3-.04, and a customer buying commercial-scale equipment installation has a direct interest in confirming the contractor holds the Class II license that scope of work actually requires. The same portal also lets a customer confirm a license is still within its 2-year renewal window rather than lapsed, since a lapsed license under Rule 121-4-.02 is not valid to work under until it is renewed or reinstated.
Sourcesgoals.sos.ga.gov 1rules.sos.ga.gov 2rules.sos.ga.gov 3rules.sos.ga.gov 4
Georgia's licensing structure for conditioned air contracting sits inside Official Code of Georgia Annotated Title 43, Chapter 14, the same chapter that covers electrical contractors, plumbers, low-voltage contractors, and utility contractors, and the Board's own rules describe that chapter as the legal authority behind licensure, discipline, and the business-registration requirement. That statutory chapter is where Georgia would define any criminal or civil penalty specific to performing conditioned air contracting work without holding the required license. This page could not fetch the text of that statute directly. The free public access point the Board's own rules-and-regulations page points to routes through a Lexis Advance interface that requires an interactive session rather than serving a plain page, and this review could not pull the statute's text through it. As a result, this page cannot state the exact fine amount, any imprisonment term, or whether unlicensed conditioned air contracting is treated as a misdemeanor in Georgia, and that gap is listed in the unsourced section below rather than guessed at. What is confirmed is the licensing structure itself, and what it implies for someone who skips it. A Georgia Conditioned Air Contractor license is issued to a specific qualifying individual under Rule 121-3-.04, tied to a specific registered business under Rule 121-6-.01, and that business must display the resulting registration number under Rule 121-3-.05. A business operating without ever obtaining that license and registration cannot legally display a registration number, because it has none, which means it cannot comply with the advertising, vehicle, and invoice display rules that apply to every properly licensed competitor, and it falls outside the Board's licensee-search lookup entirely, since that lookup only returns businesses and individuals the Board has actually licensed.
Sourcessos.ga.gov 1rules.sos.ga.gov 2rules.sos.ga.gov 3rules.sos.ga.gov 4
These are common details other guides publish about Georgia, but we could not verify them from the agency source. Confirm them directly before relying on them.
Yes. Georgia licenses HVAC work through the Georgia State Board of Conditioned Air Contractors, under the Secretary of State, at the Class I Restricted or Class II Unrestricted level, under authority in O.C.G.A. Title 43, Chapter 14 and Ga. Comp. R. and Regs. Chapter 121-3.
Class I is Restricted, limited to systems that do not exceed 175,000 BTU of heating and 60,000 BTU of cooling. Class II is Non-restricted and covers everything above that line as well as everything Class I covers, under Rule 121-3-.04.
Rule 121-3-.04 requires 4 years of documented conditioned air experience for Class I and 5 years for Class II, broken into specific lead-mechanic, service-technician, and supervisory time, plus 3 references and EPA certification.
Yes, on top of the state license. Federal Clean Air Act Section 608 rules require anyone who handles refrigerant to hold EPA technician certification, and Georgia's own how-to guide lists EPA certification as a document every Conditioned Air Contractor applicant must already hold.
Every 2 years. Rule 121-4-.02 sets a biennial renewal cycle, and the Board's how-to guide sets the deadline as November 30 of odd-numbered years, with a September through November filing window.
Rule 121-4-.03 requires 4 hours of continuing education per year, for 8 hours total by the 2-year renewal date, in safety, technology, business management, or government regulation topics. Licensees who also hold a Professional Engineer license are exempt.
Not currently for conditioned air contracting. Rule 121-2-.03 lets a Division set up a formal reciprocity agreement with another state's board, but the Board's FAQ states reciprocity with other states is not offered at this time.
Rule 121-3-.05 requires the business registration number, written as GA. REG. plus a CN or CR prefix and the license number, on both sides of every commercial vehicle in letters at least 2 inches high, on qualifying advertisements, and on every invoice and proposal form.
Yes. The state license does not replace city or county permitting. Rule 121-5-.02 lists failing to obtain locally required permits and inspections as unprofessional conduct the Board can discipline, which assumes local permits apply on top of the state license.
Search the Georgia Secretary of State's GOALS OneStop licensee-search portal, linked from the Board's own site, to confirm whether a name or business currently holds an active Class I or Class II license.
Rule 121-4-.02 allows a late renewal period on payment of a late fee, then a reinstatement process on payment of a reinstatement fee at the Board's discretion. Waiting more than 3 years past expiration removes reinstatement entirely and requires a brand new application and passing exam score.
Not in the rules this page reviewed. Rule 121-3-.04, which lists everything required to obtain a Class I or Class II license, does not include an insurance or bond minimum, and no other Board rule reviewed adds one.
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