How to check an HVAC contractor in Sarasota County before you sign

Florida licenses air conditioning contractors through the Construction Industry Licensing Board, and the register is public. Ten minutes of checking before you accept a quote eliminates the unlicensed operators, the uninsured ones and the firms whose work never gets permitted, which between them account for most of the complaints that end up in front of the county.

Start with the licence

Search the licensee database at the Department of Business and Professional Regulation. You can search by company name or by the licence number printed on the estimate. Two classes matter for residential work.

Class A (CAC) covers air conditioning, refrigeration and heating equipment of any size and capacity. Class B (CBC) is limited to systems up to 25 tons of cooling and 500,000 BTU/hour of heating, which comfortably covers any house. Either is appropriate for residential work; there is no reason to prefer one over the other for a home.

What you are checking for is straightforward. The licence is current, not expired or on inactive status. There is no disciplinary action attached. The name on the licence matches the name on the estimate, which sounds trivial and is not: a common pattern is a salesperson operating under a licence held by someone with no connection to the job.

Florida licences renew every two years and require 14 hours of continuing education per cycle, including an hour of workplace safety and an hour of business practices. A licence in good standing means somebody has kept up with that.

Then the insurance

Division Two licence holders, which includes certified and registered HVAC contractors, must carry at least $100,000 in general liability coverage and $25,000 in property damage coverage. Those are minimums, not typical figures, and most established firms carry considerably more.

Ask for a certificate of insurance issued directly by the insurer or agent rather than a photocopy. A current certificate shows the policy dates and the coverage limits, and a policy that expired last quarter is a real risk: work in an attic and inside a wall cavity has genuine potential to damage the building.

Workers' compensation is the part homeowners most often overlook. Florida allows certain officers to exempt themselves from coverage, which is legal and common in small firms. It also means that if an exempt worker is injured on your property, your homeowner's policy may become the first place the claim lands. Ask whether the people who will actually be on site are covered.

Permits are the check nobody runs

Replacing a system, and in most cases replacing major components of one, requires a mechanical permit and an inspection. Which office issues it depends on where the house sits: properties inside the North Port city limits go through the city's building division, unincorporated parts of the county through Sarasota County, and Punta Gorda and Port Charlotte through their own jurisdictions. Confirm with the authority having jurisdiction rather than assuming.

The contractor pulls the permit, not you, and a proposal that offers to skip it to save time or money is offering you the liability. Unpermitted mechanical work surfaces at the worst moment: during a sale, when an inspector or title search finds an open or missing permit, or during an insurance claim, when the carrier asks for documentation of the installation.

Permit records are also the most honest review site available. They show what a company has actually installed in the area, over what period, and whether inspections passed or were repeatedly rejected. A firm claiming twenty years locally with three permits on file is telling a different story than its website is.

Reading the quote itself

The document tells you as much as the credentials. A quote for a replacement should name the specific equipment: manufacturer, model number of both the outdoor unit and the air handler, and the matched system rating rather than the rating of the outdoor unit alone. Ratings apply to the pair, and a mismatched combination does not deliver the number on the box.

It should state what happens to the existing line set, whether the refrigerant type is changing, and what that means. New residential systems now use A2L refrigerants such as R-454B, since R-410A equipment stopped being manufactured on 1 January 2025, and that transition affects what can be reused. It should specify the permit, the disposal of the old equipment, the warranty terms for parts and for labour separately, and the payment schedule.

What should worry you: a single number with no equipment detail, a large deposit before any material arrives, a discount conditional on signing during the visit, and financing paperwork presented before the technical conversation has happened. Do this for every firm on your shortlist. If you are comparing quotes from Roman's Service Cooling & Heating and two other local companies, run all three through the same checks before you compare the prices, because a cheap quote from an unpermitted installer is not the same product.

Reviews, and what they can and cannot tell you

Online reviews are useful for one thing and misleading for most others. They are a reasonable guide to whether a company shows up when it says it will, communicates, and cleans up. They are close to worthless as evidence of technical competence, because the customer writing the review has no way to evaluate whether the diagnosis was correct.

This is the trap in the whole category. A firm that replaces a working compressor and leaves a satisfied customer with a cold house collects a five-star review. A firm that correctly diagnoses a $200 capacitor problem and declines to sell a system may collect a one-star review from someone who wanted to be told the unit was finished. Neither review measures what you actually care about.

Read for specifics rather than sentiment. A review naming the fault, the part and the price is worth twenty that say "great service". Read the negative ones first, and read how the company answered them, because a measured reply to an unfair complaint says more than any positive review does. Weight volume over average score: a handful of ratings can be arranged, thousands cannot.

Then set the reviews aside and go back to the licence, the insurance and the permit history. Those are records nobody writes about themselves.

The load calculation question

One question separates a considered proposal from a guess: ask whether the sizing came from a load calculation, and ask to see it. The industry standard method is a room-by-room calculation accounting for orientation, window area and glazing type, insulation levels, infiltration, and ceiling height.

The alternative, and it is still widespread, is replacing three tons with three tons because that is what was there. That perpetuates whatever error was made originally, and in Southwest Florida the error is usually oversizing, which produces short cycles, poor dehumidification and a house that is cold and damp at the same time.

It matters more here than in a drier climate. Latent load, the work of removing moisture, is a large share of the total, and it is the part that oversized equipment handles worst. A contractor who has done the calculation will not mind showing it to you.

Frequently asked questions

What if the company's licence belongs to someone who never comes to the job?

That arrangement, where a licence holder qualifies a business he does not actually supervise, is a recognised problem in Florida and a source of disciplinary action. If the qualifier has no evident connection to the operation, treat it as a serious warning.

Are handyman-level air conditioning repairs legal without a licence?

Filter changes and cleaning, yes. Anything involving refrigerant additionally requires EPA Section 608 certification under federal law, and system replacement requires the state licence and a permit.

How many quotes should I get for a replacement?

Three is the usual advice and it holds, provided all three are quoting comparable equipment. Three quotes for three different tonnages and efficiency levels compare nothing.

Does a manufacturer's dealer badge mean anything?

It means a commercial relationship and access to training and warranty terms, which has some value. It is not a substitute for the licence, the insurance and the permit record, and it is awarded by a manufacturer rather than by a regulator.

Licensing and insurance requirements per Florida DBPR/CILB, current as of September 2026. Verify permit jurisdiction with your local building department.