Moving to Nevada as a journeyman plumber: every state's rule
Nevada does not issue a statewide journeyman plumber license, so there is no reciprocity to speak of. Here is what that means in practice.
Nevada journeyman plumber · “Journeyman Plumber (county/city card)”
Licensed by cities and counties
Nevada has no statewide journeyman plumber license. The Nevada State Contractors Board (NSCB) licenses plumbing and heating contractors under classification C-1 (NRS/NAC 624), issues licenses only to businesses with a qualifying individual, and its FAQ says it does not license individual journeymen, so an out-of-state journeyman plumber license has nothing to transfer to at the state level and is not needed to work for a licensed C-1 contractor in most of the state. A personal credential exists only under local building codes: Clark County Code Chapter 22.02 requires a plumbing qualified individual or a journeyman plumber on site for permitted plumbing work and issues a renewable county journeyman plumber certificate to people who pass the journeyman exam accepted by the Building Official (plumbing is the one trade for which the county code publishes an experience prerequisite for the exam), and the City of Reno requires anyone installing, altering or adding to a plumbing system to hold a valid journeyman certificate under Reno Municipal Code Title 14. Neither jurisdiction publishes a waiver of its exam for an out-of-state license: Clark County's only equivalency is for a certificate from its accepted testing agency or another Nevada political subdivision within the county, while Reno lets contractors with a reciprocal license from another city, county, state or country work inside the city for 12 months before they must obtain the Reno certification. The City of Las Vegas, Henderson and the rural counties were not surveyed for plumbing cards.
How local licensing works in Nevada
How local licensing works. NRS Chapter 624 licenses only contractors. A C-1 Plumbing and Heating license is issued to a business and qualified by an individual with four years of journeyman-or-higher experience within the past 15 years (NRS 624.260); the NSCB FAQ states that Nevada does not license individual journeymen. Whether a working plumber needs a personal card is decided by each county's or city's building administrative code, and only Clark County and Reno were confirmed to require one for plumbing.
Clark County (unincorporated Las Vegas valley, Laughlin and other unincorporated areas). Clark County Code §22.02.245 issues plumbing permits only to contractors holding an active Nevada C-1 license. §22.02.250(B) requires the permit-holding contractor to employ at least one plumbing qualified individual and to have a qualified individual or a journeyman plumber present in a supervisory capacity while permitted plumbing work is under way. §22.02.255 defines a journeyman as someone who has passed the appropriate journeyman examination accepted by the Building Official and makes the county photo certificate renewable; the plumbing category is the only one in §§22.02.255-.260 for which the code publishes an experience prerequisite before the applicant may sit the exam (the exact number of years could not be re-extracted from the county PDF on 2026-09-16 and should be confirmed with the Department of Building and Fire Prevention). The only equivalency in the code (§22.02.255) is for a current certificate from an accepted independent testing agency or from a political subdivision of Nevada within Clark County, on obtaining the county photo certificate at the holder's expense; there is no provision for other states' journeyman licenses, so an arriving plumber must sit the county-accepted exam. The county's current exam vendor and card administrator for plumbing were not confirmed from an official page.
City of Reno. Reno's Development Services page states that no person may perform installations, alterations or additions to a plumbing system in the city unless done by a holder of a valid journeyman certificate, that apprentice plumbers must carry a card from an approved apprenticeship program, and that the requirement does not apply to homeowners, to contractors who keep an on-site written agreement naming the certified supervisors of their subordinate employees, or to 'contractors with reciprocal licenses from another city/county/state/country' for their first 12 months of work inside the city limits, after which the Reno plumbing certification must be obtained. Out-of-state experience is useful only as evidence toward Clark County's experience prerequisite and, for those who want to contract, toward the NSCB's four-year qualifying-individual requirement.
- Clark County (Department of Building and Fire Prevention)
- City of Reno (Development Services)
- City of Las Vegas (Department of Building and Safety; plumbing card requirement not verified)
- City of Henderson (plumbing card requirement not verified)