Plumbers and HVAC contractors have their own advertising rules, and they are not the same.

A previous post covered the Texas rule requiring electrical contractors to put their licence number in advertising, and said plainly that plumbing and air conditioning sit with different regulators whose rules we had not checked.

We have now checked them. They are similar in shape and different in the details that matter, and none of this is legal advice; confirm anything here with your own board.

Air conditioning and refrigeration

The wording tracks the electrical rule closely. All advertising by air conditioning and refrigeration contracting companies designed to solicit that business must include the affiliated licensee's licence number.

The exception list runs to seven and mostly mirrors the electrical one: national television with an available-on-request statement, directory listings carrying only name, address and telephone number, manufacturer and distributor trade ads, phone solicitations, promotional items of nominal value, and signs at your permanent business location.

The one addition is worth noting, because it is the sort of thing people assume applies everywhere. Letterheads and printed office forms are exempt here. They are not named in the electrical rule.

Plumbing

This is the strictest of the three, and the wording is the reason.

Plumbing company advertisements soliciting business must state the licence number of the RMP of record, regardless of the type of media used. That last clause does a lot of work, and it is absent from the other two rules.

The duty also sits with two people rather than one. Both the RMP of record and the owner of the company are responsible for ensuring advertisements comply, which is a distinction worth knowing if the person whose licence is on the work is not the person who signs off the marketing.

It reaches further down the stack too, naming business cards, flyers, referral coupons and other handouts. For radio or a phone call, where there is nothing to look at, the requirement becomes a statement that the company complies with state licensing, with the RMP number available on request.

The exceptions are their own list: national television, internet advertising by franchisors, promotional items of minimal value, signage at the permanent business location, and third-party aggregated listings.

Where the three diverge

Laid out together, the differences are easier to see than to remember.

The plumbing internet exception is the one to read slowly. It is written narrowly, covering internet advertising by franchisors, which is a specific arrangement rather than a general permission. Whether anything else on the internet falls outside the rule is a question for the board rather than for us, and the safe reading of "regardless of the type of media used" is the obvious one.

The practical version

Put the licence number where a customer would look for it and where a regulator would expect to find it: in the site footer, on the contact page, and on the service pages that ask for the job. It costs nothing and it removes the question.

Then check the places nobody thinks of as advertising. Your Google Business Profile description. The bio on your social pages. The paid ads. The quote template. The website is only one of the surfaces, and most of them were built by different people at different times.

If you would like the number placed properly across a site and the profiles attached to it, book a strategy call. It is a small job that nobody has ever been thanked for doing, and an awkward one to explain having skipped.