Code references
- CEC 2025 Building Energy Efficiency Standards (program homepage) — the California Energy Commission's index page for the 2025 code, with links to standards, reference appendices, and compliance manuals.
- Title 24 Part 6 statute text (UpCodes viewer) — searchable copy of the code text itself.
External equipment & licensing lookups
- AHRI Directory of Certified Product Performance — HVAC and DHW model lookups (HSPF2, SEER2, EER2, UEF). The authoritative source when you need to confirm a specific model's rating for the CF1R.
- NEEA Advanced Water Heater Specification — Tier listings — Tier 3 / Tier 4 heat-pump-water-heater qualified products. Title 24's HPWH compliance options reference NEEA tiers.
- NFRC Certified Products Directory — Certified U-factor and SHGC values for windows. Title 24 requires NFRC-certified ratings for fenestration.
- CEC Climate Zone lookup by ZIP — official ZIP-to-climate-zone mapping. Our service auto-resolves the climate zone from your project address, but the CEC tool is the canonical source if you need to verify.
Best practices for the uploaded PDF
Plan extraction is most reliable when the PDF includes — at minimum — these sheets:
- Coversheet with the project address, scope of work, and ZIP.
- Proposed floor plans showing room labels, dimensions, and door/window locations.
- Elevations for all four sides — used to count and size windows by orientation.
Vector PDFs from Revit, AutoCAD, or SketchUp work best. Photos of paper plans extract reliably as long as they're in focus and the text is readable. Total page count under ~30 keeps extraction fast; if your set is larger, just send the architectural sheets — structural and detail sheets aren't needed.
The Responsible Person on the CF1R
The CF1R is signed by the project's Responsible Person — the term defined in Title 24, Part 1, §10-103. That's whoever is eligible under Division 3 of the California Business and Professions Code to accept responsibility for the building design: typically a California-licensed architect or engineer, except that B&P Code §§ 5537 and 6737.1 also let an unlicensed designer or builder take responsibility for wood-framed single-family homes up to two stories, and small (≤4-unit) two-story wood-framed multifamily buildings. The signature affirms responsibility for everything submitted on the certificate.
The designer can delegate preparation of the energy analysis and CF1R to an energy consultant or documentation author, but they remain in charge of the building design specifications, energy calculations, and all building-feature information represented on the certificate of compliance.
How compliance verification works
Once you've confirmed inputs and chosen a design option, we run an automated Title 24 Part 6 compliance analysis against the state's prescriptive baseline for your climate zone. The result is what gets surfaced on the CF1R. The internal working model used to drive the analysis isn't provided for download — the customer-facing deliverable is the signed CF1R PDF.
If the analysis falls short on a specific climate zone (CZ12 cooling-margin shortfalls are the most common), we'll tune up specific equipment efficiency values (HVAC SEER2 / HSPF2, water-heater UEF / Tier) on the same option until it passes — wall framing, insulation, and windows stay as shown on the option you locked in. You'll get an email summary of any adjustments before the CF1R is registered with CHEERS.