Illinois · HVAC licensing · official-source guide
Illinois issues no state license for HVAC, ventilation, air conditioning, or refrigeration contractors; IDFPR's regulated-professions list omits the trade entirely. Chicago requires a General Contractor license, in five classes by project value, for most HVAC work performed in the city. Statewide, the Home Repair and Remodeling Act requires liability insurance and a signed contract for any home repair job over $1,000.
State-level license
No — see local details
Public lookup
Not published
Verified against agency sources on 2026-09-12. Rules and fees change; confirm with the named authority before relying on this guide.
The Illinois Department of Financial and Professional Regulation lists every profession and industry it regulates, from Acupuncturist through Wholesale Drug Distributor. Heating, ventilation, air conditioning, refrigeration, mechanical, and HVAC do not appear anywhere on that list, in any letter grouping. Plumbing does not appear on it either, because Illinois licenses plumbers through a different agency, the Illinois Department of Public Health, under its own Plumbing License Law. HVAC contracting has no equivalent. There is no Illinois HVAC Act, no state board that examines HVAC technicians, and no state-issued card, seal, or number that a contractor doing furnace, boiler, ductwork, air conditioning, or refrigeration work in Illinois can be required to hold. This is consistent with how Illinois treats most construction trades. Electrical contracting is also absent from the IDFPR list, and Illinois regulates it the same way it regulates HVAC: not at all, statewide. Roofing contractors and public accountants sit on the list; HVAC contractors do not. A homeowner or building owner in Illinois cannot look up a state HVAC license number because the state does not issue one. What fills the gap is a mix of a state consumer-protection statute that treats HVAC installation as a form of home repair, a state building-code framework that sets construction standards without licensing the people who do the work, and city and county registration where a municipality has chosen to require one. Chicago is the clearest example and the only large Illinois city with a published, fee-based contractor license that reaches HVAC work; it is covered later in this page. Anyone advertising a specific Illinois state HVAC license number should be treated with suspicion, since no such number exists to check.
Sourcesidfpr.illinois.gov
Illinois does not regulate HVAC contracting as a trade. It regulates it, alongside plumbing fixtures, electrical wiring, and roofing, as a category of consumer transaction under the Home Repair and Remodeling Act, enacted as Public Act 91-0230. The Act defines home repair and remodeling as the fixing, replacing, altering, converting, modernizing, or improving of residential real property, and its list of examples names central air conditioning, central heating, boilers, and furnaces specifically, alongside driveways, kitchens, and roofs. The Act applies to a single-family home or a residential building of six or fewer units. It does not apply to new construction of a single-family or multi-family residence, and it excludes repair or replacement of a home appliance carried out by an employee of the store that sold it. It also excludes maintenance, service, or repair work under $500, so a small service call can fall outside the Act's contract and insurance rules even though a furnace replacement would not. Because HVAC work is folded into this general home-repair statute rather than given its own licensing chapter, the obligations that attach to it are consumer-protection obligations: a written contract, a disclosure pamphlet, a cancellation right, and minimum insurance, described in later sections. None of them is a license. A contractor can satisfy every one of them and still hold no state HVAC credential, because Illinois has not created one. This is also why the Act's enforcement runs through the Attorney General and the Consumer Fraud and Deceptive Business Practices Act rather than through a licensing board: there is no board to revoke a license, only a statute to enforce against unfair or deceptive practices.
Sourcesillinoisattorneygeneral.gov
Illinois' Capital Development Board sets a statutory floor of construction codes rather than a trade-licensing system. Public Act 103-0510 requires statewide building codes effective January 1, 2025; until a city or county adopts its own code, or where a code question falls outside a local adoption, CDB's summary points to the International Building Code and International Existing Building Code for commercial work, the International Residential Code for new houses, the Illinois Energy Conservation Code, the Illinois Accessibility Code, the Illinois Plumbing Code, and the Fire Prevention and Safety Rules, each tied to a specific Illinois statute or administrative code section. Local governments that adopt or amend their own building code must report the code by title and edition to CDB at least 30 days before it takes effect, under 20 ILCS 3105/10.18. Two things stand out for HVAC work specifically. First, the codes CDB tracks govern how mechanical systems must be built and installed, not who is allowed to install them; a furnace or duct system has to meet an adopted mechanical or energy code, but meeting the code is a permit and inspection question, separate from any contractor license. Second, CDB's own list names an Illinois Plumbing Code with its own statutory citation, but names no equivalent statewide mechanical or HVAC code citation, which lines up with the absence of a state HVAC licensing act. In practice this means an Illinois HVAC contractor's compliance obligations run through whichever city or county has jurisdiction over the job site: pulling the correct permit, meeting the applicable mechanical and energy code edition that jurisdiction has adopted or defaulted to under the CDB framework, and passing that jurisdiction's inspection, rather than through any state licensing office.
Sourcescdb.illinois.gov
Chicago is the largest Illinois city and the only one in this research with a documented, fee-based license that reaches HVAC contracting. The city's Department of Buildings licenses general contractors, supervising electricians, electrical contractors, plumbers and plumbing contractors, mason contractors, stationary (boiler) engineers, crane operators, and elevator mechanic contractors. There is no separate Chicago license category for HVAC, mechanical, ventilating, or refrigeration contractors; that scope of work sits inside the General Contractor license instead. Chicago's General Contractor license FAQ page defines a 'regulated activity' as work needing a building, demolition, or sign permit, or a Department of Public Health permit for sandblasting, grinding, or chemical washing, or work under a stormwater management plan, and it requires a license before bidding on, undertaking, or supervising any regulated activity for compensation. The page gives an HVAC subcontractor as one of its own examples of who works under a general contractor's permit. The license is not required for a subcontractor or employee working under a licensed general contractor's supervision, for a person merely supplying materials, for an Illinois-licensed architect or engineer acting within that license, or, with conditions on stories and unit count, for an owner working on their own primary residence. What the General Contractor license excludes is narrow and specific: work requiring a drain layer, electrical, elevator mechanic, mason, or plumbing contractor license. HVAC, ductwork, and refrigeration work is not on that exclusion list, so a business doing that work as a general contractor, or as a subcontractor not under another licensed general contractor's supervision, needs the Chicago General Contractor license to pull permits and bid on the work inside the city.
Sourceschicago.gov 1chicago.gov 2
Chicago splits its General Contractor license into five classes, keyed to the fair market value of materials and labor across all concurrent and consecutive regulated activities at one site, and to whether the license covers demolition work. Class A has no project value cap and covers ordinary or complex demolition. Class B is capped at $20 million and also covers ordinary or complex demolition. Class C is capped at $10 million and Class D at $4 million, both limited to ordinary demolition only. Class E is capped at $500,000 and allows no demolition activity at all. An HVAC business bidding a $2 million hospital mechanical retrofit needs at least a Class C license by this table; a business doing $50,000 furnace and duct jobs in single-family homes fits comfortably inside Class E. The classification is not a trade specialty; it is a ceiling on how large a job the license holder may take on, matched to an insurance minimum described in the next section. A contractor that wants to bid larger HVAC and mechanical work than its current class allows has to move up to the next class, which means a larger license fee and a larger insurance policy, not a different kind of exam or credential. Chicago's Department of Buildings administers all five classes; Continental Testing Services processes the paperwork for the city. The practical effect for a contractor deciding which class to apply for is to estimate the largest single project value it expects to take on in Chicago in the coming year, including every concurrent job running at the same site, and choose the class whose cap comfortably covers it, since operating above a license's project value ceiling is itself outside the scope of what that class of license authorizes.
Sourceschicago.gov
For calendar year 2026, Chicago's Department of Buildings publishes a flat license fee and an identical renewal fee for each class of General Contractor license: Class A costs $3,500.00, Class B costs $1,800.00, Class C costs $1,300.00, Class D costs $900.00, and Class E costs $300.00. These figures are the license fee and the renewal fee side by side on the same table, meaning a Class A contractor pays $3,500.00 to obtain the license and the same $3,500.00 again at each annual renewal, not a lower renewal rate. Beyond the class fee, the Department lists four other charges. A reinstatement fee of $100.00 applies per year, or fraction of a year, that a license has sat expired before the contractor renews it. An administrative processing fee of $50.00 applies to any modification or change to an existing license that needs staff assistance, other than simply updating insurance or bond information on file. A replacement document fee of $50.00 covers issuing a duplicate license document, including first-class postage where that applies. A license verification fee of $50.00 covers issuing written verification that a license exists and is current, again including postage where that applies. None of these fees is refundable or prorated by month on this page, and none of them is a state fee; Illinois itself charges nothing for HVAC contracting, because it issues no license for it. Every dollar figure in this section is a City of Chicago fee that applies only to contracting work performed inside Chicago's city limits, collected by Continental Testing Services on the Department of Buildings' behalf, and it applies to the General Contractor license regardless of whether the contractor's work happens to be electrical, carpentry, roofing, or HVAC, since Chicago does not price a separate HVAC license.
Sourceschicago.gov
Chicago ties its General Contractor insurance minimum to the same class table that sets the project value cap. Class A requires $5 million of coverage per occurrence. Class B requires $3 million per occurrence. Class C and Class D each require $2 million per occurrence. Class E requires $1 million per occurrence. The Department of Buildings' page notes that the increased insurance requirement for Class C and D is effective January 1, 2026, and that a Class C or D license issued before that date keeps its prior, lower requirement until the policy on file expires and is renewed. The policy has to be commercial general liability coverage, issued by an insurer authorized to write coverage in Illinois and rated B+ or higher by A.M. Best Company, and it must cover bodily injury, personal injury, property damage, and completed operations arising from the license or from activity conducted under it. A contractor may combine a primary policy with an excess or umbrella policy to reach a minimum above $1 million; the page directs anyone who needs the full detail to Section 4-36-090 of the Municipal Code of Chicago, which is the specific ordinance section rather than this summary page. This insurance minimum is not a one-time application requirement; it is a standing condition of the license itself. A Chicago General Contractor license runs for one year from issuance and has to be renewed annually with Continental Testing Services, using forms from CTS's own website submitted by mail along with current proof of insurance. But the license does not wait for that annual date to fail: it is automatically inactivated the moment the insurance policy behind it expires, at any point in the year, and proof that a new or renewed policy is in force has to reach Continental Testing Services before the license becomes active again. A contractor that lets its license lapse entirely, past the renewal date, also faces a separate reinstatement fee of $100.00 per year or fraction of a year the license sat expired, on top of the normal renewal fee.
Sourceschicago.gov
Chicago's General Contractor license page lists what an applicant has to submit, and an exam is not on that list. The required items are a completed general contractor license application; a statement of financial solvency in the format built into the application; proof the applicant is authorized to do business in Illinois, which sole proprietors do not need to provide; an Assumed Name Certificate from the county clerk if the applicant operates under a name other than its own; proof of insurance in the amount the chosen class requires; certification that the insurer carries the required B+ or better rating; and government-issued photo identification for the specific individuals tied to the business structure, such as a sole proprietor, a corporation's president or local manager, an LLC's managing member, or a partnership's managing partner, along with identification for anyone else who signed the application. General contractor licenses in Chicago are issued to businesses, including sole proprietorships, not to individual tradespeople the way a supervising electrician license is. Continental Testing Services, under contract to the Department of Buildings, processes both new applications and renewals, and application and renewal forms are only available through CTS's own website, submitted by mail. For an HVAC contracting business, the practical consequence is that Chicago is not asking any individual technician to pass a trade exam to become a Chicago General Contractor. It is asking the business to prove it is a real, insured, financially solvent entity authorized to operate in Illinois. Technical competence in HVAC work itself is not something this particular license application tests or verifies.
Sourceschicago.gov
Illinois has no state HVAC contractor license to be reciprocal with, so there is no state-level reciprocity question to answer for this trade; a contractor cannot transfer a license Illinois never issued. Chicago's General Contractor license page, which is the license that actually reaches HVAC work in the state's largest city, does not describe any reduced application path, waived fee, or accelerated approval for a contractor who already holds a general contractor or HVAC license issued by another Illinois city, another state, or a national trade organization. The application requirements described earlier, financial solvency, business authorization in Illinois, insurance, and identification, apply the same way to an out-of-state contractor moving into Chicago as they do to a business that has operated in the city for decades. Holding a HVAC or general contracting license somewhere else may support the financial solvency showing a contractor has to make, but the city's own page does not name it as a formal reciprocity mechanism, and it is not listed in the page's own summary of what an applicant must provide. For a contractor licensed in a neighboring state, such as Indiana or Wisconsin, and planning to take on HVAC work inside Chicago, the practical implication is to plan for a full Chicago General Contractor application on its own timeline and cost, in whichever class matches the size of work planned, rather than expecting an expedited path based on the out-of-state credential. Outside Chicago, since most Illinois municipalities have not been confirmed here to license HVAC contracting at all, the reciprocity question mostly does not arise, because there is frequently no local license to reciprocate into in the first place.
Separate from any Chicago license, Illinois' Home Repair and Remodeling Act imposes its own insurance floor on anyone engaged in the business of home repair and remodeling, statewide, and its definition of that business names central air conditioning, central heating, boilers, and furnaces specifically. Section 25 of the Act, as enacted by Public Act 91-0230, requires public liability and property damage insurance in the amount of $100,000 per person and $300,000 per occurrence for bodily injury, $50,000 per occurrence for property damage, and $10,000 per occurrence for improper home repair or remodeling that does not conform to applicable state, county, or municipal building codes. The Act carves out one exception: a person or business does not need this specific insurance policy if it has a net worth of at least $1,000,000, shown on a financial statement prepared within the prior 13 months. Outside that exception, the insurance requirement in this section applies regardless of whether the contractor holds any city license, because the Act is a statewide consumer-protection statute rather than a Chicago rule, and it covers HVAC work performed anywhere in Illinois on a covered residence. This insurance floor is materially lower than Chicago's General Contractor minimums described earlier, which run from $1 million to $5 million per occurrence depending on license class. A Chicago-licensed HVAC contractor working inside the city is carrying insurance well above this state minimum already; a contractor working HVAC jobs in a part of Illinois with no local license requirement at all is still bound by this state minimum on any job that fits the Act's definition of home repair and remodeling.
Sourcesillinoisattorneygeneral.gov
For any home repair or remodeling job over $1,000, which covers most furnace replacements, central air installations, and boiler jobs, the Home Repair and Remodeling Act requires the contractor to furnish a written contract or work order before starting the work. That contract has to state the total cost, list parts and materials with reasonable particularity, disclose any charge for the estimate, and state the business's name and address, plus its residence address if the business receives mail through a post office box or receiving service rather than a physical address. The Act also requires the contractor to hand the customer a copy of a specific pamphlet, titled 'Home Repair: Know Your Consumer Rights,' before the contract is signed, for any job over $1,000, and both the contractor and customer have to sign and date an acknowledgment form confirming the pamphlet was provided. For a job of $1,000 or under, the pamphlet still has to be provided, but the signed acknowledgment is not required. The pamphlet itself has to be a standalone document in at least 12 point type. Separately, Illinois law gives a customer three business days from signing to cancel a contract that was signed inside their home, and the contractor cannot take that right away by starting work early, selling the contract to a lender, or any similar tactic; a senior aged 65 or older gets up to 15 business days instead of three. None of this is a licensing requirement, and none of it is specific to HVAC work; it is a disclosure and cancellation framework that an Illinois HVAC contractor has to follow on the same terms as a roofer, a kitchen remodeler, or a driveway paving company, because the Act treats them as the same category of transaction.
Sourcesillinoisattorneygeneral.gov 1illinoisattorneygeneral.gov 2
Illinois has no HVAC license to revoke, so the state-level penalty structure runs through the Home Repair and Remodeling Act's own enforcement section instead of a licensing board. Section 30 of the Act makes it unlawful to remodel, make repairs, or charge for that work before getting a signed contract or work order on any job over $1,000. Section 35 gives the Attorney General or any county's State's Attorney authority to sue to stop a pattern of violations, lets them accept an assurance of voluntary compliance, and, critically, folds any violation of the Home Repair and Remodeling Act into a violation of the Consumer Fraud and Deceptive Business Practices Act, which carries its own remedies and penalties under that separate statute. Inside Chicago, unlicensed or out-of-scope HVAC contracting is enforced as a General Contractor license violation rather than a state consumer-fraud matter. The Department of Buildings investigates alleged violations of its trade contractor licensing rules and can discipline a license holder directly or refer the matter to the city's Department of Law or its Office of the Inspector General for prosecution. The Department's own list of common trade license violations includes work performed without a valid permit, work performed by a contractor not listed on the permit, work that goes beyond the scope of a valid permit, and listing a contractor's name or license number on a permit application for a project that contractor never intended to work on. Anyone who believes a violation has occurred can report it to the Department of Buildings in writing on company letterhead. Neither the state statute nor the Chicago page checked for this report states a specific dollar fine amount for an unlicensed HVAC job, so no fine figure is given here.
This research confirms one Illinois city, Chicago, with a documented, fee-based license that reaches HVAC contracting, and confirms that Illinois' state regulator, IDFPR, licenses no HVAC trade anywhere in the state. Between those two confirmed facts sits every other Illinois city and county, including large ones such as Aurora, Naperville, Rockford, Joliet, and Peoria, where this research did not locate and verify a published HVAC or mechanical contractor licensing page on that city's own website. The Illinois Attorney General's own consumer guidance reflects this directly: its guide on choosing a home repair contractor tells homeowners to 'contact your local village hall or township to find out if there is a license requirement,' rather than pointing to any statewide answer, because the Attorney General's office itself treats local licensing as a jurisdiction-by-jurisdiction question rather than a fixed statewide rule. For an HVAC contracting business operating across several Illinois municipalities, the honest planning assumption is that Chicago has a specific, priced, class-based General Contractor license that covers HVAC work, that the rest of the state has no equivalent state license, and that any other individual city or county's registration, permit, or business-license requirement has to be checked directly with that municipality's own building or licensing department before bidding work there, rather than assumed from Chicago's rules or from IDFPR's silence on the trade. Whether Aurora, Naperville, Rockford, Joliet, or Peoria specifically require an HVAC or mechanical contractor registration is listed in the unsourced section of this page rather than stated as fact here, because it was not confirmed against each city's own site.
There is no state license lookup for this trade, because Illinois issues no state HVAC license to look up. IDFPR runs a License Lookup tool for the professions it does regulate, approved as a primary verification source by bodies such as The Joint Commission and the National Committee for Quality Assurance, but it only returns results for professions on IDFPR's own regulated list, and HVAC contracting is not on that list, so a search for an HVAC contractor there will not return a meaningful result either way. Inside Chicago, the verification path is different and does work: the Department of Buildings maintains a Contractor License Lookup, run through the city's own web application, where a customer can search for a currently licensed trade contractor, including a General Contractor, and see licenses that have recently expired or been inactivated. Since HVAC work in Chicago runs under the General Contractor license rather than a trade-specific one, checking that lookup for General Contractor status is the closest thing Chicago offers to an HVAC-specific license check; it will not, however, tell a customer whether a specific technician sent to their home is a supervising employee of that licensed business. Outside Chicago, with no confirmed municipal HVAC license located in this research for the state's other large cities, a customer's practical verification options are the ones the Attorney General recommends generally: asking the contractor directly for proof of insurance and references, calling the Illinois Attorney General's consumer line or the Better Business Bureau to check complaint history, and calling the local village, city, or township hall to ask what, if anything, that jurisdiction requires and tracks for HVAC contractors.
Sourcesidfpr.illinois.gov 1webapps1.chicago.gov 2illinoisattorneygeneral.gov 3
Because Illinois issues no state HVAC license, no Illinois HVAC contractor can truthfully advertise a state HVAC license number, a state HVAC certification, or the phrase 'licensed by the State of Illinois' for HVAC work specifically, since IDFPR's own regulated-professions list confirms no such license exists to hold. A business making that claim in Illinois is describing a credential that does not exist. Inside Chicago, the credential that does exist is the General Contractor license, in one of five classes, and the city's own page describes it as authorizing 'permitted construction, demolition, and building rehabilitation work,' not as an HVAC-specific trade credential. A Chicago-licensed HVAC business can accurately say it holds a City of Chicago General Contractor license, and can state its class and license number, but 'licensed HVAC contractor' is doing the work of plain English description rather than pointing to a specific HVAC license, because Chicago, like Illinois, has not created a specific HVAC license for that phrase to refer to. Neither the state statute nor the Chicago license pages checked for this report describe a prohibited-wording list for HVAC advertising specifically, the way some states set out banned phrases for unlicensed contractors in statute. The clearest, sourced advertising obligation that does exist statewide sits inside the Home Repair and Remodeling Act's contract-disclosure rules covered earlier: a written contract over $1,000 has to state the business's own name and address, which is a contract disclosure rule rather than an advertising rule, and this research did not locate a separate Illinois or Chicago statute requiring a license number to appear on HVAC advertising, vehicles, or estimates, so that specific claim is not made here.
Sourcesidfpr.illinois.gov 1chicago.gov 2illinoisattorneygeneral.gov 3
Regardless of whether an Illinois HVAC business holds a Chicago General Contractor license, a different license from another municipality, or no local license at all, federal law still reaches the individual technician who physically works on refrigerant. Section 608 of the Clean Air Act, implemented at 40 CFR Part 82, Subpart F, and administered by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, requires that any technician who maintains, services, repairs, or disposes of equipment that could release refrigerant into the atmosphere be certified. EPA defines a covered technician as anyone who attaches or detaches hoses and gauges to measure pressure in an appliance, adds or removes refrigerant, or otherwise violates the integrity of a motor-vehicle air conditioner-like appliance or a small appliance, other than by disposing of it; apprentices are exempt only while closely and continually supervised by a certified technician. EPA issues four certification types: Type I for small appliances, Type II for high or very high-pressure appliances other than small appliances and vehicle air conditioners, Type III for low-pressure appliances, and Universal, which covers all of them and requires a proctored, not open-book, core exam. These credentials do not expire once earned, and EPA itself does not issue the certification card; an EPA-approved certifying organization administers the test and issues it. EPA's regulations also prohibit intentionally venting ozone-depleting refrigerants or their substitutes while servicing air conditioning or refrigeration equipment, with narrow exceptions for de minimis releases during good-faith recovery attempts, normal-operation leaks below EPA's repair threshold, and specific substitute refrigerants EPA has exempted, and it requires leaks above a set size to be repaired in equipment holding 50 pounds of refrigerant or more. This certification requirement exists whether or not Illinois or a given Illinois city licenses the business at all, and it attaches to the individual technician rather than to the business license, so a Chicago General Contractor license and an EPA Section 608 card are two separate, non-substitutable credentials that the same HVAC or refrigeration technician typically needs together.
These are common details other guides publish about Illinois, but we could not verify them from the agency source. Confirm them directly before relying on them.
No. The Illinois Department of Financial and Professional Regulation's list of every profession and industry it regulates does not include HVAC, mechanical, heating, ventilation, air conditioning, or refrigeration contracting in any letter grouping, so there is no state license, board, or exam for this trade.
Chicago requires a General Contractor license for most HVAC work, since the city has no separate HVAC license and its General Contractor page names an HVAC subcontractor as an example of work that falls under a general contractor's permit rather than under one of the excluded trades like electrical or plumbing.
It is a business license, in five classes by project value, that Chicago's Department of Buildings requires before bidding, undertaking, or supervising most construction, demolition, or rehabilitation work in the city. HVAC and ductwork work is not on the license's short exclusion list, so it falls under this license.
For 2026, Chicago charges $3,500.00 for Class A, $1,800.00 for Class B, $1,300.00 for Class C, $900.00 for Class D, and $300.00 for Class E, with the same fee due again at each annual renewal, plus separate fees for reinstatement, modifications, replacement documents, and verification letters.
Minimum commercial general liability coverage runs from $1 million per occurrence for Class E up to $5 million per occurrence for Class A, with Class B at $3 million and Class C and D at $2 million, using an insurer rated B plus or higher by A.M. Best, per Chicago's license page.
Yes. The Home Repair and Remodeling Act requires anyone doing home repair or remodeling, a category that names central air conditioning, central heating, boilers, and furnaces, to carry $100,000 per person and $300,000 per occurrence bodily injury coverage and $50,000 property damage coverage, unless the business has a net worth of $1,000,000 or more.
It is Illinois' statewide consumer-protection statute for residential repair work, enacted as Public Act 91-0230. Its definition of covered home repair and remodeling explicitly lists central air conditioning, central heating, boilers, and furnaces, so most residential HVAC installation and replacement work in Illinois falls under it.
For any home repair or remodeling job, the Act requires giving the customer a copy of the 'Home Repair: Know Your Consumer Rights' pamphlet. For jobs over $1,000, the customer and contractor also have to sign a written acknowledgment form confirming the pamphlet was provided before the contract is signed.
It is valid for one year from issuance and must be renewed annually through Continental Testing Services with current proof of insurance. The license is also automatically inactivated at any point during the year if the underlying insurance policy on file lapses, independent of the renewal date.
There is no state license to verify since Illinois issues none for this trade; IDFPR's own License Lookup only covers professions on its regulated list. Inside Chicago, the Department of Buildings' Contractor License Lookup lets a customer check General Contractor license status for the business doing the work.
Outside Chicago, violating the Home Repair and Remodeling Act's contract rules is enforceable by the Attorney General or a State's Attorney as a Consumer Fraud and Deceptive Business Practices Act violation. Inside Chicago, unlicensed general contracting is investigated by the Department of Buildings, which can discipline the contractor or refer the case for prosecution.
Yes. Federal EPA Section 608 certification, in Type I, II, III, or Universal form, is required for any technician who services, maintains, or disposes of refrigerant-containing equipment, regardless of whether the business holds a Chicago General Contractor license or any other municipal registration, because it attaches to the individual technician, not the business license.
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