Department of Building Safety
- Phone
- (603) 589-3080
- Hours
- Monday to Friday 8 a.m. to 5 p.m.; permit desk to 4:30 p.m.; inspections 8:30 a.m. to 3:30 p.m.
New Hampshire
Nashua, NH permit fees and requirements
Nashua prices permits by measurement rather than by the value of the work:
$0.18 per square foot of area affected for new residential construction and $0.28 for commercial, $0.080 per square foot of habitable area for a new home's electrical system, $0.50 per ampere of commercial service, $1.00 per outlet, and $9.50 per plumbing fixture residential against $12.00 commercial. Every application carries a $50.00 non-refundable fee, every permit pays $75.00 if an inspector has to return, and work started without a permit doubles the fee up to a $275.00 or $750.00 cap.
Permit costs we have worked out
Each page shows the fee components, the formula the jurisdiction uses, and a worked example you can follow by hand.
Estimate your potential Nashua permit fee with our Building Permit Fee Calculator.
| Permit | Category | Last reviewed |
|---|---|---|
| Nashua building permit cost | structural | 2026-09-25 |
| Nashua electrical permit cost | electrical | 2026-09-25 |
| Nashua plumbing permit cost | plumbing | 2026-09-25 |
Local context
What is specific to Nashua
Three things about Nashua are worth reading before any number here.
The first is that nothing is priced from cost. Manchester, forty miles north, charges .006 to .015 of the estimated cost of the work; Nashua charges square feet, fixtures, outlets and amperes. That has a practical consequence for a reader comparing the two: in Nashua a small, expensive job — a laboratory fit-out, a service upgrade — is cheap, and a large, cheap job — a warehouse, a long duct run — is not, whereas in Manchester the reverse is closer to true.
The second is that the residential and commercial tables are genuinely separate, and the same work can be two different prices. A commercial outlet is $1.00 and a residential outlet has no row at all, because a house's electrical permit is priced from habitable area instead. An electric water heater is $18.00 on the residential plumbing table and $25.00 on the commercial one, and it is on the electrical table as well — one appliance, two permits, three rows. And a fixture is $9.50 in a house and $12.00 in a commercial building, which makes the table a reader is in the first thing to check.
The third is that the fee is the count on the form. Nashua's plumbing application has a fixture table with a box for each kind of fixture, and the fee is $9.50 times the boxes that are ticked; the electrical forms ask for the quantity beside each item for the same reason. That means an application with twenty outlet boxes that are not counted is an application that will be re-invoiced.
Valuation
How valuation is determined here
Nashua does not price from valuation at all, and this site does not ask for one. The building schedule is charged per square foot of area affected, and §105-28A(2) says what that means: "New buildings, additions, alterations, mobile homes, in-ground swimming pools, basements, connecting structures, future expansion areas and areas capable of being used as living or occupiable space shall be included to calculate aggregate floor area." It is the area being worked on, not the area of the finished building.
The electrical and plumbing schedules are charged per item instead — habitable square feet for a new house's service, fixtures, outlets, lighting fixtures, panels, amperes of commercial service. Where a figure in this dataset needs a measurement, it is that measurement and not a cost; where a schedule row needs a measurement this site has no basis for (the per-100-foot pipe rows, most notably) the row is documented and not priced.
Who to contact
The office that issues the permit, with the details we have verified. Confirm current hours before travelling.
What these fees do not include
The list is not a disclaimer: on a new house the fees left out can outweigh the permit fee several times over. Every entry here is stated on the permit page as well.
Not included in our estimates
These figures are Nashua's building, electrical and plumbing permit fees as published in §105-28 of the Revised Ordinances, with the $50.00 application fee, the $75.00 re-inspection and the unpermitted-work surcharge that attach to every permit. They are not a total project cost, and they exclude:
- The $35.00 filing fee and the $25.00 land use review fee the department's own summary describes. They are not in the code's fee article and their scope is not stated there, so the site names them and does not charge them; ask Building Safety which permits carry them.
- The per-100-foot pipe rows — water pipes, drain/waste/vent pipes and storm drainage at $18.00 per 100 feet or part thereof, in both the residential and the commercial table. The fee engine has no linear-measure basis and this dataset does not add one for a single city's pipe rows.
- Demolition, which is $40.00 up to 1,000 square feet plus "$3.15 for each additional 100 square feet or part thereof". The round-up is the fee and there is no honest per-foot rate for it.
- The discretionary minimums: $30.00 residential and $50.00 commercial for miscellaneous equipment, and the trade equivalents at $40.00, $45.00 and $50.00. They apply where the Building Official judges them appropriate rather than to a defined scope.
- The LEED reductions — 5%, 10%, 15% and 20% off the building permit fee for certified, silver, gold and platinum projects — which this site does not apply to a reader who has not shown the certification.
- Moving a building ($200.00), a certificate of occupancy ($50.00), work not related to floor area (construction cost × $0.65 per $100), retaining walls ($0.15 or $0.30 per linear foot against a $25.00 or $50.00 minimum), phased construction (a 25% surcharge per upgrade phase) and the expedite service fee ($80.00 per hour per staff member, $250.00 minimum out of hours).
- Mechanical permits, which §105-28B prices by equipment and capacity and which are transcribed in the research record rather than attached to a page.
- Fire protection system permits, which are the Fire Marshal's under a separate schedule, and anything charged by the State of New Hampshire or by another department.
Official sources for this jurisdiction
The documents these figures are transcribed from. Where a source contradicts itself we keep both readings and say so on the permit page.
- Municipal codeCityPrimary source
Read 2026-09-25 from the codifier's consolidation (code date 2026-02-10). §105-28 carries four schedules — A building, B mechanical, C electrical, D plumbing — with the amending ordinance and date printed against each subsection, most recently 3-9-2021 by Ord. No. O-21-045. This is the operative source for every fee rule in the seed.
- OrdinanceCityPrimary source
Read 2026-09-25 as a 22-page scanned ordinance. It is the amendment the code's own notes point to for the current rates, and the document the department's permits page names when it says the new fees are listed under it.
- City websiteCityPrimary source
Permits Required & Cost — City of Nashua
Read 2026-09-25. The department's own summary in plain language: fees "are normally determined by the square footage of the project", "there is an additional $35 filing fee for each permit" and "an additional $25 fee for Land Use review", and "a building permit only includes the structural portion. Separate permits are required for plumbing, electrical or mechanical work". The $35 filing fee is described in this source and is not in the code's fee article, so the site names it rather than charging it.
- City websiteCityPrimary source
Permits — Department of Building Safety, City of Nashua
Read 2026-09-25. Lists the trade applications this seed's rules were checked against — residential and commercial electrical, mechanical and plumbing — and states that "the new fees for the permits are listed under Ordinance 0-21-045". Also notes that internally and externally illuminated signs require an electrical permit.
- Official documentCityPrimary source
Residential Electrical Permit application, City of Nashua
Read 2026-09-25 as a scanned PDF with no text layer, so its figures were read as page images against the code text rather than extracted. Prints the §105-28C(1) rows as an itemised table with a $50.00 application fee line and the $275.00 surcharge footnote. Four sibling forms — commercial electrical, residential and commercial mechanical, commercial plumbing — were printed from their own URLs beside it.
- Official documentCityPrimary source
Residential Plumbing Permit application, City of Nashua
Read 2026-09-25 as a scanned PDF. Its fixture table is the list the code's "per fixture or fixture connection" row names — sink, lavatory, outside faucet, backflow preventer, shower, water closet, floor drain, garbage disposal, tub, dishwasher, washing machine, other — plus the electric water heater, water pipe, drain/waste/vent, sewer connection and pump rows, with the $50.00 application fee and the $275.00 surcharge footnote.