California Climate Zone 6

Climate zone 6 covers the Southern California coastal strip, from Santa Barbara down through the Los Angeles beach cities into coastal Orange County. The Energy Commission assigns 181 of California's ZIP codes to it, making it the 7th largest of the sixteen.

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Where zone 6 is

The Energy Commission assigns 181 ZIP codes to zone 6 — about 6.7 per cent of every ZIP code it lists, and the 7th largest of the sixteen. Places in it include Santa Barbara, Ventura, Oxnard, Santa Monica, Long Beach, Torrance, Huntington Beach and Laguna Beach.

The zone is long and narrow, tracking the shoreline for hundreds of miles while rarely reaching far inland. The ZIP codes fall in the prefix ranges 900xx, 901xx, 902xx, 903xx, 904xx, 905xx, 906xx, 907xx, 908xx, 913xx, 926xx, 927xx, 928xx, 930xx, 931xx.

What drives compliance in zone 6

Heating loads are minimal and cooling loads are modest, which makes this one of the least demanding assignments in the state. The usual constraint is glazing: a coastal design with a large west-facing glass wall can still fail, because solar heat gain is the one part of the calculation the mild climate does not soften.

Where zone 6 ends

A long narrow strip that tracks the shoreline for hundreds of miles while rarely reaching far inland. Long Beach is the clearest illustration of how tight the inland boundary is — the city crosses out of zone 6 into the next assignment within about ten miles of the water.

Boundaries follow conditions rather than administrative lines, so the assignment is resolved from the project ZIP code rather than inferred from the city on the drawings.

Cities we cover in zone 6

4 of our city guides cover places in this zone, and some of them cross a zone boundary inside the city.