Title 24 Reports in El Dorado County

Foothills to the lake

Zone 12 covers the western, lower part of the county — El Dorado Hills, Cameron Park, Shingle Springs, Placerville, Diamond Springs and the surrounding foothills, fifteen of the twenty-three ZIP codes we derive for it. Zone 16 covers the higher eastern end, including South Lake Tahoe and the mountain communities along the way.

Every ZIP code here sits wholly inside the county

El Dorado is the cleanest county in this group from a data standpoint. Not one of its ZIP codes is materially shared with a neighbouring county — every one we derive sits overwhelmingly within El Dorado's own boundary.

That is worth saying because it is not typical. Most California counties have ZIP codes straddling their lines, which is why a county name is a weaker guide than a ZIP code. Here the two happen to agree.

What the two zones ask for

Zone 12 is a Central Valley and foothill climate: hot summers, cool winters, cooling-led design. Zone 16 is the state's coldest zone, where heating and envelope performance dominate and snow is a design condition. The county contains both, and a project's position along the highway east decides which applies.

A common thread with Placer

El Dorado and Placer County both run from the valley edge to the Sierra crest, and both hold a mountain zone alongside a valley one. The lower zones differ, though — El Dorado's is zone 12 and Placer's is zone 11 — so the two counties are not interchangeable even where projects sit at similar elevations.

Example ZIP codes and their zones

Derived from the Energy Commission's ZIP-to-climate-zone table, with county membership taken from the U.S. Census Bureau's 2020 ZCTA-to-county relationship file:

• Climate zone 12 — 95619, 95623, 95667, 95682, 95762 and 10 more
• Climate zone 16 — 95720, 95721, 96150, 96155 and 4 more

Every ZIP code here sits inside the county

Unusually, none of the ZIP codes we derive for El Dorado County is materially shared with a neighbouring county. In most of California a county's ZIP codes straddle its boundaries, which is one reason a ZIP code is a better guide to requirements than a county name.

Finding the zone for your own project

The zone is set by the project's location and confirmed from the ZIP code against the Energy Commission's published table — not from the county name and not from the nearest large town. Because El Dorado County contains more than one zone, that check decides which set of numbers a report is written against.

Give us the project address and we determine the zone as part of preparing the report. It is the first thing established, because every insulation, glazing and equipment figure downstream depends on it.

City and unincorporated permitting

A project inside a city's limits is permitted by that city. A project on unincorporated land is permitted by the county instead, and the two can run different submittal processes even where the energy requirements are identical. The California Energy Code is statewide — what changes locally is the climate zone the site falls in and how the jurisdiction wants the compliance documents presented.

Climate zones in El Dorado County

El Dorado County contains California climate zones 12 and 16. The zone drives the insulation, glazing and equipment performance a report has to demonstrate, and it is confirmed from the project ZIP code against the Energy Commission's published table.