Title 24 Reports in San Mateo County
San Mateo County is entirely one climate zone, bay shore and coast alike. The boundary runs along the Santa Clara County line.
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One zone, coast to bay
Both sides of the peninsula carry the same assignment. San Mateo, Redwood City, Menlo Park, Burlingame, Millbrae, San Bruno, South San Francisco and Daly City on the bay side; Pacifica, Half Moon Bay, Montara and the coastside communities on the ocean side. The ridge between them does not divide the county the way the Oakland hills divide Alameda.
The line is the county boundary
It falls at the southern end. Menlo Park is in this zone; Palo Alto, immediately across the line in Santa Clara County, is not. East Palo Alto sits with Palo Alto rather than with Menlo Park. For a firm working the peninsula that is the one place the assumption breaks, and it breaks over a street rather than over a hill.
What shapes projects here
Uniform zone and largely built-out towns mean most residential work is addition and alteration rather than new construction, with the compliance route that follows from that. Where new construction does happen it is more often multi-family or mixed-use than single-family, which changes the standards that apply rather than the zone.
So in this county the zone is never the interesting question. Scope and building type are.
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 itself is statewide — what changes locally is the climate zone the site falls in and how the jurisdiction wants the compliance documents presented.
The zone is confirmed from the project address as a matter of course, but in this county the answer does not change from one address to the next.
Climate zone in San Mateo County
San Mateo County contains California climate zone 3. 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.