California

Statewide summary — confirm with your building department before designing

No value on this row was changed by this audit, but frost depth and ground snow load are not meaningful as single numbers here, and the stored frost depth matches no adopted California value that could be located. Most of coastal and valley California has no frost line requirement at all; the California Residential Code instead sets a minimum footing depth of 12 inches below undisturbed ground. In the Sierra, Placer County requires 18 inches between 5001 and 7000 feet of elevation and 24 inches between 7001 and 8000 feet, and Mono County requires 18 inches minimum. The stored 6 inches is neither a lowland nor a mountain value and must not be used to set a footing depth. Ground snow load of 10 psf is similarly unusable: it is 0 across the coast and most of the south, while Mono County tabulates 55 psf in the high desert up to 285 psf at the highest elevations and Placer County requires a site specific determination in the Tahoe basin. Seismic design category D is correct and well supported; Los Angeles, San Francisco, San Diego, Sacramento, Fresno, Redding, El Centro and South Lake Tahoe all compute to D or higher, and Placer and Mono counties both adopt D. Near fault sites can be E. The 110 mph wind speed is an ASCE 7 ultimate design wind speed and holds for most of the state, but Placer County assigns 130 mph in the 5001 to 7000 foot band and California contains several designated special wind regions. Termite risk of moderate corresponds to the compound moderate to heavy band of the IRC map. 2026 snow-load pass. California publishes no statewide ground snow load, so both snow_load_min_psf and snow_load_max_psf are left null. That absence was established by reading the adopted instrument, not assumed. The residential Table R301.2(1) is printed as an empty form: every data cell is blank and the footnotes assign the entries to the local enforcing agency. Footnote o reads that the jurisdiction shall fill in that section of the table using the Ground Snow Loads in Figure R301.2(6), and footnote b likewise assigns the frost line depth column to the jurisdiction. That blank-table structure was read directly from HCD Initial Express Terms for Part 2.5 (HCD 04-18, pages 18-19). HCD Initial Express Terms for the 2025 CRC propose no change to R301.2, so the delegation carries forward; that last step is an inference from the absence of an amendment item rather than from reading the 2025 printed table, because the published Title 24 text sits behind codes.iccsafe.org, which returns HTTP 200 but serves no readable content to a non-interactive client. On the commercial side the 2025 California Building Code adopts the 2024 IBC and with it ASCE 7-22, so ground snow load comes from the ASCE 7-22 geodatabase and from case studies, not from any California table. Two official records disagree about what survives that change and both are recorded here rather than one being chosen silently. A public comment filed in the BSC 05/24 rulemaking (Stantec, Oct 21 2024) states that ASCE 7-22 effectively eliminates the regional case studies historically used to set California ground snow loads and that mountain values rise, in some cases by more than 100 percent. The California Building Officials bulletin on 2024 CBC Section 1608.2 takes the contrary position that site-specific case studies remain available at the discretion of the building official under CBC Section 1.8.7. Neither was used as the source of a number, because neither yields one: CALBO is a professional association and not a state instrument, and the Commission approved the Chapter 16 adoption on Feb 26-27 2025 without adding a California snow amendment. ASCE hazard values were not used as a source anywhere in this pass. Ground snow load is corrected from 10 to null because no state instrument produces 10 psf and California has no statewide figure to give; the real range runs from zero on the coast and in the deserts to case-study territory in the Sierra. Frost depth is corrected from 6 to 12 inches because 6 inches is below the model minimum that California adopts without amendment: R403.1.4 requires exterior footings to be placed not less than 12 inches below finished grade on undisturbed ground. Twelve inches is a floor and not a design value; the mountain counties require more and the frost line cell remains the local jurisdiction entry to fill. Wind speed of 110 mph and seismic design category D are unchanged by this pass.