Plumber licensing in Iowa

Iowa reciprocates with South Dakota alone — journeyperson and master, plumbing only, exam-earned licenses — and the route is written for nonresidents: you apply with a non-Iowa address, and moving to Iowa first closes it. Movers use the other door: licensure by verification, open to any state's exam-earned license, but it requires established Iowa residency — the two routes are mutually exclusive on where you live.

The verification route carries its own bridge: a three-month temporary license, renewable once, to work while you arrange the Iowa exam.

On the South Dakota route, no interim authority exists — you wait for the license. On the resident verification route, the temporary license above is the answer. The exemption worth screening every industrial placement for: direct employees of commercial and industrial companies doing manufacturing, installation, service, or repair for their own employer need no Iowa license at all — but the same person sent in as a contractor's employee is not exempt, so get the employment relationship in writing.

The journeyperson exam takes four years of practical experience as an apprentice — and for time earned after 2010, it must come from a US DOL-registered apprenticeship program. The mechanics: a $35 exam-approval application, about two weeks' processing, then you schedule with Kirkwood Community College (15 sites statewide) at $99 per attempt, pass at 75%, and file the license application — which itself can take up to six weeks.

Iowa wants both halves: enrollment in a DOL-registered apprenticeship program and the board's apprentice license — one license covers all the mechanical trades. Eighteen or older with a diploma or GED, employed by a licensed contractor under supervision, applied for by you with the program's sponsorship details. $50 for the full three-year term, online (paper costs $25 more).

Statutory preemption with a date on it: every local plumbing and mechanical licensing provision has been null and void since 2009, and no city may stop a state licensee from working. Cities and counties keep permit and inspection fees — a permit is not a license.

Both exist and neither covers the other: workers hold personal licenses; the business holds a contractor license ($250, plus a separate $150 state contractor registration) with a master of record for each discipline, half a million in liability coverage, and a surety bond. All of it is the employer's paperwork.