Title 24 Reports in Santa Barbara County

Three zones, and the coastline explains them

The county's coast runs east to west rather than north to south for much of its length, which is unusual in California and is why it holds three zones in a comparatively small area.

Zone 6 covers the south-facing coastal strip — Santa Barbara, Montecito, Goleta and Carpinteria — sheltered by the mountains behind it. Zone 5 covers the north-west of the county, the Santa Maria and Lompoc areas, which face the open ocean and are cooler and foggier. Zone 4 appears inland, in the Cuyama area beyond the mountains.

The inland zone rests on a single ZIP code

Zone 4 is derived here from one ZIP code, 93254, which the Census relationship file places 92 per cent within the county. It is a genuine assignment rather than a rounding artefact, but it covers a small and sparsely populated part of the county — so a Santa Barbara County project is realistically either zone 6 or zone 5 unless it is specifically in that area.

South coast against north county

The distinction locals draw between the south coast and the north county is close to the zone boundary, and it has real consequences for a report. Zone 6 is among the mildest assignments in the state; zone 5 is cooler with a stronger marine influence. Neither is cooling-driven in the way the interior is, but they are not interchangeable.

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 4 — 93254
• Climate zone 5 — 93427, 93436, 93455, 93458 and 8 more
• Climate zone 6 — 93101, 93105, 93108, 93110 and 7 more

ZIP codes that cross the county line

A ZIP code is a postal boundary, not a county boundary, and several here fall on both sides of one. Where that happens we do not treat the county as settling the question:

• 93454 — about 72% within Santa Barbara County, the remainder in San Luis Obispo 28%
• 93013 — about 75% within Santa Barbara County, the remainder in Ventura 25%

For an address in one of these, the climate zone still comes from the ZIP code, which is assigned by the Energy Commission regardless of the county line. What the split affects is which jurisdiction issues the permit — worth confirming before a submittal.

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 Santa Barbara 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 Santa Barbara County

Santa Barbara County contains California climate zones 4, 5 and 6. 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.