Home › Bathroom Remodeling › Nassau County
Anyone can put a new shower where the old one was. We're who you call when the problem is what's behind it. Greene Group Construction is a construction, restoration and cleanout company that builds bathrooms — demolition, debris hauling, structural and subfloor repair, waterproofing and the finished room under one contract. In Nassau County the hard part is rarely the tile. Your address sits under one of three towns, two cities or roughly 64 incorporated villages, and they do not agree about what needs a permit, who may touch the plumbing, or what you file. This page is about that.
NASSAU COUNTY BATHROOM PROJECTS
Real bathroom renovations — the tile going up, the waterproofing you never see again, and the finished room.
Marble Master — Walk-In Glass Shower
Shower Tile In Progress
Tub/Shower — Frameless Glass
Carrara Top & Bronze Fittings
Bathroom remodeling in Nassau County is permitted by your town, city or village — three towns, two cities and roughly 64 incorporated villages, each with its own rules. Villages on the Garden City pattern require a separate permit per trade. Oyster Bay fines unlicensed plumbing $3,000 to $5,000 on a first offense. No Nassau jurisdiction publishes a permit turnaround time.
Start with the state rule, because it explains everything that follows. 19 NYCRR 1203.3(a)(1) requires every authority having jurisdiction in New York to require a building permit for work that must conform to the Codes. The same regulation then lists eight categories a locality may choose to exempt. Two of them matter to a bathroom: “painting, wallpapering, tiling, carpeting, or other similar finish work,” and repairs “provided that the work does not have an impact on fire and life safety.”
The state does not exempt finish work — it allows your locality to. Whether re-tiling a Nassau bathroom needs a permit is therefore a question about your village or town, not about New York. And the exemption is narrow by design: moving a drain, running a new 20-amp branch circuit, cutting a joist for a shower base or relocating a vent stack is regulated work in every Nassau jurisdiction.
The practical test is this. If the bathroom is being redecorated, you may be exempt where your locality has adopted the finish-work exemption. If the bathroom is being rebuilt, you are filing. Confirm the current requirement with your own building department before ordering materials. This page is general information about how these jurisdictions operate, not legal or code advice.
Nassau County is not one building department. It is three towns — Hempstead, North Hempstead and Oyster Bay — plus two cities, Long Beach and Glen Cove, plus roughly 64 incorporated villages that run their own review. The table below is the part almost no competitor page publishes: what genuinely changes as you cross a village line.
| Jurisdiction | Communities Covered | What's Genuinely Different There |
| Town of Hempstead | Levittown, Merrick, Bellmore, Wantagh, Seaford, Elmont, Franklin Square, Uniondale, East Meadow, Oceanside, Baldwin, plus the unincorporated South Shore | The clock is the story. Under Town Code § 86-13A work must commence within 90 days of issuance, and under § 86-13C a project not completed within one year of issuance is deemed abandoned. The § 86-13D extension fee is 25% of the total permit fees, not less than $50 nor more than $120. A Master Electrician needs a Town license under Chapter 84, with a penalty up to $1,000 and/or 30 days, and each day counted as a separate offense. An Online Permit Center exists. |
| Town of North Hempstead | Manhasset, Port Washington, Albertson, Searingtown, Carle Place and the unincorporated North Shore. The Villages of New Hyde Park and Roslyn review their own permits. | The strictest package in Nassau. Construction drawings signed and sealed by a New York State PE or RA. A RESCheck report for any renovation affecting the thermal envelope — which catches bathrooms on exterior walls and any addition. Town licenses for plumbers and electricians on top of the county HIC. General liability naming the Town with no X.C.U. exclusion. A survey exception exists for interior-only work. |
| Town of Oyster Bay | Hicksville, Plainview, Syosset, Massapequa, Bethpage, Jericho, Woodbury, East Norwich and surrounding hamlets | The highest-stakes plumbing rule on Long Island. The Master Plumber must hold or be recognized under a Town license and carry $1M/$2M public liability naming the Town as additional insured. Unlicensed plumbing work draws $3,000–$5,000 on a first offense and $7,500–$10,000 for subsequent offenses. |
| Incorporated villages (Garden City pattern) | Roughly 64 villages including Garden City, Rockville Centre, Mineola, Freeport, Great Neck, Westbury, Floral Park, Lynbrook, Valley Stream and Hempstead Village | A separate permit for each trade: plumbing, drainage, heating, air conditioning, ventilating, refrigeration and electrical. A bathroom touches three or four of those at once. Routine inspections are free; legalizing unpermitted work costs 3× the application fee. |
| City of Long Beach | Long Beach, and the barrier-island neighborhoods within the City line | Permits required for all plumbing and electrical work. All electrical work must be performed by a licensed electrician. A separate contractor registration through the City Clerk is required in addition to the county HIC. Permit prices are not published. |
| City of Glen Cove | Glen Cove | Nassau's second city, with its own building department and its own filing process rather than town review. If your address is in Glen Cove, nothing on a Town of Oyster Bay handout applies to you. |
Read that as a scheduling document. Hempstead's four-month windows mean an approval you sat on can lapse before you break ground. North Hempstead's sealed-drawing requirement puts an engineer or architect on the critical path before you file, not after. Oyster Bay's insurance language means your plumber's certificate has to name the Town specifically, which most policies do not do by default.
Because of what a bathroom is. Villages following the Garden City pattern do not issue one permit for a renovation. They issue a permit for each regulated trade: plumbing, drainage, heating, air conditioning, ventilating, refrigeration and electrical. That structure is neutral for a bedroom, which touches one of those categories. It is expensive for a bathroom, which touches three or four before you have made a single design decision — supply and waste plumbing, the exhaust ventilation the code requires, the dedicated 20-amp receptacle circuit and lighting, and often heat.
The penalty for skipping it is real too. Routine inspections in these villages are free, but legalizing work done without a permit costs three times the application fee, applied to the same stack of trade permits you avoided. The bill usually arrives at the worst possible moment: a refinance, a sale, or a claim.
This is also why “how much is the permit?” has no single answer in Nassau, and why we build permit and inspection fees into Nassau proposals as a visible line item rather than absorbing them into a round number. Our Long Island remodeling permits hub covers each Nassau town and the village and city rules alongside them, including which departments publish a fee schedule at all.
A bathroom is plumbing with a room built around it. That makes the Town of Oyster Bay's licensing rule the highest-stakes jurisdictional fact in this county for this room.
Oyster Bay requires that the Master Plumber on the job hold, or be recognized under, a Town of Oyster Bay license, and carry public liability coverage at $1,000,000 per occurrence and $2,000,000 aggregate naming the Town of Oyster Bay as an additional insured. Both halves are enforced. Unlicensed plumbing work in Oyster Bay draws $3,000 to $5,000 on a first offense and $7,500 to $10,000 on subsequent offenses — the steepest plumbing penalty we have found in any Long Island jurisdiction.
What that means for a Hicksville, Plainview, Syosset or Massapequa homeowner is simple. Do not hire on price alone for the plumbing scope, and do not accept “my guy is licensed” without seeing which authority licensed him. Our own carpenters and project managers run your job start to finish. Electrical and plumbing are performed by licensed Nassau and Suffolk trade contractors we've worked with for years — we schedule them, we coordinate the inspections, and we're accountable for the result.
North Hempstead assembles the heaviest filing package in Nassau County, and every element of it lands on a bathroom project.
Sealed drawings. Construction drawings must be signed and sealed by a New York State licensed professional engineer or registered architect. That is a real cost and a real lead time on a job a homeowner may have assumed was a weekend of tile.
RESCheck. A RESCheck energy compliance report is required for any renovation affecting the thermal envelope. Bathrooms trip this more often than people expect: a bathroom on an exterior wall, a bump-out, a new window, or any addition puts you in scope.
Town trade licenses. North Hempstead licenses plumbers and electricians itself, in addition to the Nassau County Home Improvement Contractor license the general contractor carries. Two separate license questions, two separate answers.
Insurance wording. General liability must name the Town as an insured party, and the policy must not carry an X.C.U. exclusion — the exclusion for explosion, collapse and underground hazards. A standard certificate frequently fails on this exact point.
There is one piece of relief worth knowing: a survey exception exists for interior-only work. If the bathroom stays inside the existing footprint and nothing changes outside, you may not need the survey the department otherwise expects. Confirm it with North Hempstead for your specific scope.
Nobody knows, and we are going to say so plainly. No Nassau County jurisdiction publishes a permit turnaround time. Not the Town of Hempstead, not North Hempstead, not Oyster Bay, not the City of Long Beach, not the City of Glen Cove, and not the villages. Long Beach does not even publish permit prices. When a contractor page quotes a confident number of weeks for a Nassau bathroom permit, there is no source behind it — that figure was written by a copywriter, not a building department.
For an individual single-family home, no — and this is the structural difference between the two counties that almost nobody explains correctly.
The Nassau County Department of Health has jurisdiction over septic systems for realty subdivisions of five lots or more, and over commercial systems with a design flow of 1,000 gallons per day or more. Your house is neither. For an individual home, Nassau directs homeowners to the local building department. There is no Nassau county-level equivalent of the Suffolk County Department of Health Services review that can gate a bathroom addition before the building department ever sees it. In Nassau, the wastewater question is asked by the same town, city or village that reviews the rest of the job. If the project is a new bathroom rather than a replacement of an existing one, our guide to adding a bathroom on Long Island covers where it can go and what the drain, vent and stack connections require.
That does not mean septic is irrelevant here. Nassau is largely sewered, but the North Shore is the exception at roughly 90% unsewered — about 40,000 residential properties. If your house is one of them, the condition and capacity of the existing system is a live question before you add fixtures, and it is a building-department conversation. Nassau's S.E.P.T.I.C. grant program offers up to $20,000 toward qualifying system replacement.
We deliberately do not publish a Nassau countywide sewered-versus-unsewered percentage. The 85% figure the county publishes refers to sewage collected by its two treatment plants, which is a different measure from the share of homes on sewers, and it gets misquoted constantly. If your project is on the other side of the county line, the wastewater rules are genuinely different and we cover them separately in bathroom remodeling in Suffolk County. Health-department requirements change; confirm the current rules with the department that has jurisdiction before you rely on any of this for your project.
Here is the planning orientation. The full treatment — line items, the labor share, tariff exposure on vanities and tile, and how many days you are actually without the room — lives on our Long Island bathroom remodel cost guide.
| Tier | Planning Range | What It Is | Timeline |
| Surface refresh | $12,000 – $25,000 | Fixtures, vanity, paint, re-tile in place. Nothing moves. | 1–2 weeks |
| Midrange full remodel | $25,000 – $50,000 | Everything replaced, layout essentially unchanged. Zonda's NY metro midrange figure of $30,376 sits inside this band. | 3–5 weeks |
| Major / gut renovation | $50,000 – $85,000 | Down to studs and subfloor. Layout changes, plumbing moves, hidden conditions surface. | 5–8 weeks |
| Upscale | $85,000 – $140,000 | Stone, custom glass, radiant floor, high-end fixtures. Zonda's NY metro upscale figure of $90,686 sits inside this band. | 8–12 weeks |
| High-end custom | $140,000+ | Fully bespoke. | 12+ weeks |
These ranges are triangulated from Zonda's 2025 Cost vs. Value data for the New York metro market and the published tiers of Long Island bathroom contractors. They are planning ranges, not a quote.
One thing we will not give you is a Nassau-versus-Suffolk price difference. No credible dataset splits Long Island bathroom cost by county, and anyone quoting you a percentage invented it. The real county difference is jurisdictional, and it shows up in the schedule rather than the tile budget: a village bathroom carrying four separate trade permits and a sealed drawing set is a longer project than the identical bathroom two miles away in an unincorporated part of a town.
A bathroom packs more plumbing into less floor area than any other room in a house. A failed shower pan, a supply line behind the vanity, or a wax ring that has been weeping for two years does not stay in the bathroom — it goes into the subfloor, into the joists, and into the ceiling of the room below. By the time it is visible downstairs, the scope is structural.
That is where this company is different from a bathroom showroom. Greene Group Construction runs water damage restoration and insurance claims work as real service lines alongside bathroom remodeling, so one company handles the mitigation, the demolition, the debris hauling, the structural and subfloor repair and the finished rebuild. On a claim that matters: the team that documents the damage is the team that scopes and performs the repair, with no handoff where scope quietly disappears between a mitigation vendor and a remodeling contractor.
It changes ordinary remodels too. When we open a Nassau bathroom and find blackened subfloor or a joist that has been wet for a decade, that is a Tuesday, not a crisis. The one-day bath franchises sell speed, which means installing over what is there — a genuine service for a sound bathroom, and a genuine limitation the moment there is water in the structure, a wall to move, or a claim to run.
Ask for the number, then ask the second question nobody asks. Greene Group Construction holds Nassau County HIC #EF-65498 and Suffolk County HIC #HI-72958; the Nassau number can be verified with the Nassau County Office of Consumer Affairs.
The second question is about the trades, because in Nassau the county license is not the whole picture. In the Town of Oyster Bay, ask which authority licenses the Master Plumber and whether his insurance names the Town as an additional insured. In the Town of North Hempstead, ask whether both the plumber and the electrician hold Town licenses. In the Town of Hempstead, ask whether the electrician holds the Master Electrician license required under Chapter 84 — the penalty there runs up to $1,000 and/or 30 days, with each day counted as a separate offense. In the City of Long Beach, ask whether the contractor is registered with the City Clerk. A contractor who cannot answer those questions for your specific address has not worked in your jurisdiction.
Do I need a permit to remodel a bathroom in Nassau County?
It depends on your specific town, city or village, and on the scope. Under 19 NYCRR 1203.3(a)(1) every authority having jurisdiction must require a building permit for work that has to conform to the Codes. Localities may exempt eight categories, including painting, wallpapering, tiling, carpeting or other similar finish work, and repairs that do not affect fire and life safety. Moving plumbing, adding circuits or altering framing is regulated work, so it is permit territory in Nassau.
Which Nassau County town has the strictest bathroom permit requirements?
The Town of North Hempstead. It requires construction drawings signed and sealed by a New York State licensed professional engineer or registered architect, a RESCheck energy report for any renovation affecting the thermal envelope, Town licenses for plumbers and electricians on top of the Nassau County Home Improvement Contractor license, and general liability insurance naming the Town with no X.C.U. exclusion. A survey exception exists for interior-only work.
What happens if bathroom plumbing is done without a licensed plumber in the Town of Oyster Bay?
Oyster Bay carries the highest plumbing penalty we have found on Long Island: $3,000 to $5,000 for a first offense and $7,500 to $10,000 for subsequent offenses. The Town requires that the Master Plumber hold or be recognized under a Town license and carry $1,000,000 per occurrence and $2,000,000 aggregate public liability coverage naming the Town of Oyster Bay as an additional insured. A bathroom is almost entirely plumbing, so this rule bites harder here than in any other room.
Do Nassau County villages require a separate permit for each trade?
Many do. Villages following the Garden City pattern require a separate permit for each of plumbing, drainage, heating, air conditioning, ventilating, refrigeration and electrical work. A bathroom commonly touches three or four of those at once, so one room can generate several village permits on top of the building permit. Routine inspections are free, but legalizing work done without a permit costs three times the application fee.
How long does a bathroom permit take in Nassau County?
No Nassau County jurisdiction publishes a permit turnaround time. Not the Town of Hempstead, not North Hempstead, not Oyster Bay, not the City of Long Beach, and not the villages. Any contractor who guarantees you a specific number of weeks is guessing. Call the department, ask what the current queue looks like, and build schedule float into the project rather than a fixed approval date.
Does the Nassau County Department of Health review a bathroom addition?
For an individual single-family home, no. The Nassau County Department of Health has jurisdiction over septic systems for realty subdivisions of five lots or more and over commercial systems with a design flow of 1,000 gallons per day or more. For one house, Nassau directs homeowners to the local building department. There is no Nassau county-level health review that gates a single-family bathroom addition the way Suffolk's process does.
What does a bathroom remodel cost in Nassau County?
As a planning range: a surface refresh runs $12,000 to $25,000, a midrange full remodel $25,000 to $50,000, a major or gut renovation $50,000 to $85,000, upscale work $85,000 to $140,000, and high-end custom above $140,000. These ranges are triangulated from Zonda's 2025 Cost vs. Value data for the New York metro market and the published tiers of Long Island bathroom contractors. They are planning ranges, not a quote.
How do I verify a Nassau County bathroom contractor is licensed?
Ask for the Nassau County Home Improvement Contractor license number and verify it with the Nassau County Office of Consumer Affairs. In North Hempstead and Oyster Bay, also ask whether the plumber and electrician hold the Town licenses those towns require, and in the Town of Hempstead whether the electrician holds the Master Electrician license required under Chapter 84. Greene Group Construction holds Nassau County HIC #EF-65498 and Suffolk County HIC #HI-72958.
Ready to talk about your Nassau County bathroom? Call (631) 532-7346 and we will tell you which department your address actually falls under, how many permits that jurisdiction will want, and what the work costs. For the wider picture across the Island, start at our bathroom remodeling hub, or request a free estimate.
RELATED SERVICES
NASSAU COUNTY COMMUNITIES WE SERVE
One company for demolition, debris hauling, structural and subfloor repair, waterproofing and the finished room — permitted correctly in your town, city or village.