Austin, TX HVAC permit requirements

2024 International Residential Code, effective July 10, 2025. Texas has no statewide residential code enforcement, so this is an Austin answer and not a Texas one — the city next door may be on a different edition entirely.

2024 International Energy Conservation Code, effective July 10, 2025, adopted on the same day as the rest of the technical codes.

Austin does not use the International Mechanical Code. It adopts the Uniform Mechanical Code (UMC), 2024 Edition, effective July 10, 2025, and the Uniform Plumbing Code (UPC), 2024 alongside it.

That is the IAPMO family, not the ICC family most of the country works from. If your plan set, your details or your submittal narrative cite IMC sections, an Austin reviewer is reading a different book. Electrical is on the 2023 NEC, with the 2026 edition effective September 1, 2026.

Required — through the adopted 2024 IRC and 2024 IECC, which carry the equipment sizing rules into Austin along with everything else adopted on July 10, 2025.

⚠️ One thing we could not confirm. A widely used third-party code library lists an “Austin Residential Load Calculation Code (Manual J), 2016” as separately adopted. No such code appears on the City of Austin’s own current technical codes page, which lists eleven adopted codes and does not include it — it looks like a pre-2025 adoption that the July 2025 update replaced. Treat a Manual J as required, but if someone cites a 2016 Austin Manual J code at you, ask the Development Services Department to confirm before you redo anything.

Not verified by name in the city’s posted materials. There is a quirk worth knowing though: replacing duct runs does not need a permit in Austin at all. The residential exemption list includes ‘Replacing supply and return duct runs’, ‘Replacing an exhaust or dryer duct run measuring less than 15 feet (4,572 mm) in length’ and ‘Increase the number of supply registers within the existing duct run’.

A permit is required. Austin publishes an explicit list of work exempt from permits, and HVAC equipment replacement is not on it. What is exempt is portable gear only: ‘A portable heating appliance’, ‘A portable ventilation appliance’, ‘A portable cooling unit’, ‘A portable evaporative cooler’.

The list closes with ‘Other work as determined by the building official’, so an unusual case can be put to them — but a changeout is not exempt on its face.

Austin moved to the 2024 editions of the IRC, IECC, IBC, IEBC, IFC, IPMC, ISPSC, IWUIC, UMC and UPC all at once, effective July 10, 2025. If your software, your details or your last Austin submittal are built against the 2021 editions, that is the change that moved underneath you.

Austin Build + Connect (AB+C) is the city’s permitting portal.

abc.austintexas.gov