Utah rebuilt its HVAC licensing in 2026. The S350 specialty classification no longer appears on DOPL's contractor application, HVAC is now H100, a general classification with its own trade exam, a mandatory RMGA gas certification, and a 4,000-hour recency rule that disqualifies veterans who moved off the tools. Most national HVAC guides still say S350. Here is what Utah actually requires now, and who can legally hold it.
If you are reading a guide that tells you to apply for an S350 HVAC Contractor license in Utah, you are reading a guide that has not checked the state's paperwork this year.
Utah rebuilt its HVAC licensing in 2026. The specialty classification that carried HVAC work for years is being replaced by a general classification with its own trade exam, a mandatory gas certification, and, the change that catches the most people, an experience requirement that no longer accepts general construction background. On DOPL's current contractor application, dated March 27, 2026, HVAC appears as H100 in the general classification list alongside E100, B100, and R100. S350 no longer appears anywhere in the specialty trade classification list.
Most of the national HVAC licensing pages still say S350. This guide covers what Utah actually requires now, and, because it changes who can legally hold the license for your company, the qualifier rules that come with moving HVAC into the general tier.
Utah does not issue an individual HVAC license
Start here, because it is the single most common misunderstanding and it shapes everything else.
Utah licenses plumbers as individuals, apprentice, journeyman, master, and the residential equivalents. Utah licenses electricians as individuals. Utah does not issue an individual journeyman or master HVAC license.
There is no "Utah HVAC journeyman license" to apply for. If you install and service HVAC equipment in Utah, your credential question is not "how do I get my HVAC license", it is "who holds the contractor license I work under, and am I attached to that company correctly?"
That is why the H100 change matters to technicians and not just to owners. The credential lives at the company level, held up by one qualified individual.
What changed: S350 to H100
The statutory authority is H.B. 442 (2025 General Session), "Construction Trades Licensing Amendments," sponsored by Rep. Thomas W. Peterson. Per the Utah Legislature's own bill page, HB 442 took effect May 7, 2025, and among other things it "provides the requirements for an HVAC contractor license."
DOPL then implemented the classification. The verifiable, primary-source evidence that the transition is real and in force: DOPL's Contractor Application, All Classifications, version v20260327, lists this under General Classifications:
E-100 General Engineering · B-100 General Building · R-100 Residential & Small Commercial · H-100 HVAC · E-200 General Electrical · E-201 Residential Electrical · P-200 General Plumbing · P-201 Residential Plumbing
And the Specialty Trade Classifications list on the same form runs B200, R101, R200, S202, S220, S230, S260, S270, S280, S310, S330, S354, S370, S410, S440, S510, S700. There is no S350.
Widely circulated secondary sources, exam-prep providers and industry publications, report that new applications moved to H100 as of April 20, 2026, and that contractors holding an S350 in good standing on January 1, 2026 are treated as interim H100 qualifiers through a grandfather window running to November 30, 2027. Those transition dates are consistent with what we see on the current application, but we have not confirmed them in DOPL rule text, so treat them as reported rather than verified. If you hold an S350 today, call DOPL and get your specific transition deadline confirmed in writing. That is a phone call worth making this month, not next year.
H100 requirements, from DOPL's current application
The application (v20260327) sets out four HVAC-specific items on top of the standard general-classification requirements:
1. Pass the H100 written Trade Exam. A dedicated HVAC trade exam, separate from the business exam.
2. The qualifier must be a Certified Natural Gas Technician. The application requires the qualifier to provide an RMGA (Rocky Mountain Gas Association) or equivalent certificate. This is not optional and it is not waivable by experience. If your prospective qualifier does not hold a current gas certification, he cannot qualify an H100 no matter how long he has been in the trade.
3. Documented HVAC experience, 4,000 hours within the past 5 years. And note carefully how DOPL asks you to prove it. The application says: "Provide W-2, K-1, or tax return showing qualified HVAC employment (4,000 hours within the past 5 years)."
4. Or, instead of the experience documentation, the qualifier's active Utah Journeyman Plumber, Master Plumber, Residential Journeyman Plumber, or Residential Master Plumber license number.
That fourth item is a genuinely useful and almost entirely unpublished detail: a Utah plumbing license substitutes for the H100 work-experience requirement. A shop with a licensed Utah plumber on staff may already have its H100 experience problem solved. The RMGA certification and the H100 trade exam still apply.
The recency rule, and why it disqualifies people
Read the experience requirement again: 4,000 hours within the past 5 years.
This is a recency rule, not a lifetime-total rule, and it is the provision that quietly disqualifies the most candidates. A veteran who ran HVAC crews for twenty years and then moved into estimating, sales, or general management five years ago may have tens of thousands of lifetime hours and still fail this test, because the qualifying hours have to sit inside the five-year window.
It also changes what "experience" counts. Under the old specialty structure, broad construction-industry experience could carry an applicant. Under H100, the experience must be HVAC-specific. General contracting background does not substitute.
The proof-of-experience detail nobody is writing about
Look at what DOPL asks for as evidence of qualified HVAC employment: a W-2, K-1, or tax return.
The state is not asking for a letter from a former boss, a résumé, or a signed affidavit of hours. It is asking for federal tax documents, the paperwork that exists only when someone is employed or holds an ownership stake. A 1099 is conspicuously absent from that list.
That is not an accident, and it connects directly to how Utah defines the qualifier role.
Who can hold your H100: the qualifier rules
Because H100 is a general classification, it sits under the same qualifier architecture as B100 and E100, and Utah's qualifier rule is one of the most explicit in the country about employment.
Utah Admin. Code R156-55a-304 requires the qualifier to receive remuneration for not less than 12 hours of work per week for the contractor licensee. That floor can drop only if the total hours worked by all owners and employees is under 50 hours per week, and even then it cannot fall below 20 percent of everyone's total hours.
Then it splits by role:
If the qualifier is an owner, remuneration may be owner's profit distributions or dividends, but only with a minimum ownership of 20 percent of the contractor licensee.
If the qualifier is an officer or manager, the rule states the remuneration "shall be in the form of W-2 wages."
DOPL built that straight into the Qualifier Affidavit. Under "Select Qualifier's Business Entity Position," the form offers exactly two checkboxes:
Owner of at least 20% OR W-2 Employee in Management Position
Two boxes. No third option. And DOPL's contracting FAQ removes any remaining ambiguity: "The only legal way to 'work under' any license is as an officer or W2 employee of a licensed contractor."
The same FAQ addresses the arrangement some HVAC shops get offered when they are short a qualifier: "The one who 'loans' their license and the one who 'borrows' the license are both guilty of class A misdemeanors." Both sides. Named by the agency. See is it legal to rent a contractor license for how Utah compares to the other states that have written this down.
The rest of the H100 application
H100 is a general classification, so the general-classification requirements apply on top of the HVAC-specific items:
Pre-licensure course, a 25-hour pre-licensure course minimum, plus the 5-hour Business and Law Course for general and primary classifications. Alternatives listed on the application include being a current qualifier on an active unrestricted Utah contractor license, holding an accredited 2- or 4-year degree in Construction Management, or holding an active unrestricted Utah professional engineer license.
Utah Contractor Business and Law exam, required for general classifications. So an H100 applicant sits two exams: Business and Law, and the H100 trade exam.
Experience for general classifications, at least two years / 4,000 hours of paid construction-industry experience. Alternatives DOPL accepts: a 2- or 4-year Construction Management degree, an active Utah PE license, or a passing score on the NASCLA Accredited Examination for Commercial General Building Contractors. For where else that exam carries weight, see NASCLA exam accredited states. Note that for H100 specifically, the HVAC-specific 4,000 hours is a separate requirement from the general construction-experience item.
General liability insurance, $1,000,000 each occurrence and $3,000,000 aggregate minimum, DOPL listed as certificate holder, covering the full scope of work for the entire duration of active licensure (Utah Admin. Code R156-55a-302d).
Workers' compensation, required if the applicant has employees or owner-workers holding less than 8 percent ownership.
Processing fees, $50 per qualifier, $175 per classification, plus a $1.00 Electronic Reference Library Surcharge, non-refundable.
Financial responsibility, eight-year lookback on judgments, liens, tax liens, and child support delinquencies; seven-year lookback on bankruptcy, covering the applicant, proposed qualifier, owners, officers, and managers. A bond may be required before issuance (Utah Code § 58-55-306, R156-55a-602).
Fee disclaimer: every fee above is set by DOPL or the testing vendor, is subject to change, and should be confirmed on the current application before you send payment.
What happens if your H100 qualifier leaves
The clock is short and it is the same one that governs every Utah contractor classification. Per DOPL's contracting FAQ: both the qualifier and the licensee must notify DOPL in writing within 10 days of the qualifier's last day. The licensee then has 60 days from that date to replace the qualifier. Miss the notice and miss the replacement, and the license can be revoked.
DOPL also states the ownership question plainly: "The license stays with the company; it does not 'belong to' nor does it 'go with' the qualifier."
For an HVAC company that just moved to H100, this is sharper than it used to be. Your replacement qualifier now needs the RMGA gas certification, the H100 trade exam, and 4,000 HVAC-specific hours inside five years, a materially smaller candidate pool than the old specialty classification drew from, and a 60-day window to find someone in it. Build the bench before you need it: the contractor qualifier contingency plan.
Frequently asked questions
Do I need an HVAC license to work as a technician in Utah? There is no individual HVAC license in Utah to hold. You work under a company that holds the contractor classification. What matters is that the company is properly licensed and that you are properly employed by it.
Is the S350 dead? For new applications, DOPL's current application form no longer lists it, H100 is the HVAC classification. Existing S350 holders are reported to have a transition window, but confirm your own deadline directly with DOPL rather than relying on any published date, including the ones reported in this article.
Can a B100 general building contractor do HVAC work? Utah's classification scopes are set in Utah Admin. Code R156-55a-301 and its subsections. Scope questions between a general classification and a trade classification are exactly the kind of thing that gets companies cited, so read the scope rule for your classification rather than assuming, and when the line is close, ask DOPL in writing.
How much does it cost to get an H100 in Utah? The state-side pieces are knowable: DOPL's per-qualifier and per-classification processing fees, two exam fees through the testing vendor, the RMGA certification, the pre-licensure coursework, and insurance premiums for a $1M/$3M policy. What genuinely varies is the rest, whether you already have a qualifier who meets the new recency rule, whether a plumbing license short-circuits your experience requirement, and how many classifications you are carrying. There is no honest single number. For a scoped answer to your situation, see our consultation packages.
Can one person qualify more than one HVAC company? Under R156-55a-304 a qualifier may not act as qualifier for more than three licensees at one time, and exceeding that requires demonstrating material authority over the businesses to the satisfaction of the Commission and the Division, plus written approval from both. Three is generous by national standards. It is still a hard ceiling.
The strategic read for Utah HVAC companies
The H100 transition did something more consequential than rename a classification. It moved HVAC from the specialty tier, where a broad construction background could carry an application, into the general tier, and then added a gas certification and a five-year recency rule on top.
The result is a smaller pool of people who can legally qualify a Utah HVAC company, governed by a rule that gives you two ways to attach one of them: make him a 20 percent owner, or employ him as a W-2 manager.
That second option is what a qualifying agent is, and Utah has written the employment requirement into the rule text, the affidavit checkbox, and the proof-of-experience list. Companies that treated the qualifier as a paperwork line item are the ones that will struggle with H100; companies that treat him as a key employee will be fine.
If your HVAC company needs an H100 qualifier who actually clears the new bar, RMGA certified, current HVAC hours, and willing to be a real W-2 employee, that is what we do. Start at hire a qualifying agent. If you hold the credentials yourself, see become a qualifying agent.
Related Utah reading: plumbing license Utah, worth reading even if you are an HVAC shop, because a Utah plumbing license substitutes for the H100 experience requirement, and electrician license Utah. For the national picture on what a mechanical contractor license requires, see how to get an HVAC contractor license.
Verified against DOPL's Contractor Application, All Classifications (v20260327), DOPL's contracting FAQ, Utah Admin. Code R156-55a-304, and the Utah Legislature's H.B. 442 (2025 General Session) bill page, as of August 2026. Transition dates reported by secondary sources are identified as such. Fees and requirements are set by the board and testing vendor and change without notice, verify with DOPL.
Disclaimer: This article is provided for educational and informational purposes only. It does not constitute legal advice, licensing guidance, or an offer of services. Licensing requirements vary by jurisdiction. For specific compliance questions, contact The Licensing Company for a confidential consultation.