Title 24 Reports in Garden Grove

Four of Garden Grove's five street ZIP codes are climate zone 8. The fifth, 92844, is zone 6: the coastal zone does reach into the city, but from the south, and the western end stays inland.

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Zone 6 comes in from the south

On a map you would expect the milder coastal zone to start at the west end of the city. It does not. 92845, the westernmost of the five ZIP codes, is zone 8, and so are Cypress and Los Alamitos beyond it. The one zone 6 ZIP is 92844, on the south side of the city against Westminster, which is zone 6 too. By Census land area 92844 is about 12 percent of Garden Grove.

Each zone has its own weather file and its own prescriptive targets in the compliance software. An identical backyard unit built in 92844 and in 92843, a couple of miles east, is tested against two different climates, and a calculation run for one cannot be relabelled for the other. The city name on the plans settles nothing here; the ZIP code is the first thing a Garden Grove report needs.

ADU Go plans leave the energy sheets to you

Through its ADU Go program the city offers four pre-approved ADU plans of its own: a 447 sq ft studio, a 630 sq ft one-bedroom, a 750 sq ft two-bedroom and a 1,000 sq ft three-bedroom. The city is explicit that they contain architectural plans only, with no structural sheets and no site-specific Title 24 sheets. That is deliberate rather than an omission: the energy calculation depends on how the unit faces, which zone its lot is in and what heating, cooling and water heating go into it, none of which a stock plan can know. The plans cannot be used on a lot in Flood Zone A, and applications go in online through GG Ready.

The 2025 code as published

Section 18.04.010 of the municipal code adopts the 2025 California Energy Code and the 2025 CALGreen code, last updated by Ordinance 2971 on 12 November 2025. The city's local amendments are confined to the building, residential, plumbing and fire codes, and Garden Grove has no entry on the Energy Commission's list of local ordinances that exceed the 2025 Energy Code. Projects are modelled to the statewide standard, which governs applications submitted on or after 1 January 2026.

A housing target more than 25 times the last

The sixth-cycle Regional Housing Needs Allocation gives Garden Grove 19,168 units to plan for between 2021 and 2029. The fifth cycle asked for 747. The state Department of Housing and Community Development certified the city's Housing Element on 12 December 2023. Every unit built against that target, from an ADU to an apartment block, carries its own compliance documentation.

Building and Safety, through GG Ready

Building permits are issued by the Building and Safety Division of the Community Development Department. New applications, residential and commercial, solar and reroofs included, are filed through GG Ready; only projects submitted before 13 February 2023 remain on the older system. The energy compliance documents are uploaded there with the rest of the plan set.

Common Title 24 Questions in Garden Grove

Garden Grove projects fall in California climate zones 6 and 8. The zone drives the envelope and equipment requirements a report has to meet, and a single city can span more than one, so it is confirmed per address.

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