[Bldg-sim] ASHRAE climate zones by ZIP code?

West, Scott P Scott.West at jacobs.com
Thu Jun 4 13:58:52 PDT 2015


Dominique,
I also undertook the same quest about a year and a half ago when I discovered (from speaking to some ASHRAE and DOE folks) that climate zones in the US are assigned by county.  ASHRAE Standard 169 sets climate zones based on historical weather patterns but they are assigned by county.

I came up with approximately 3,200 counties and 33,120 zip codes in the US (it depends on what US territories you’re counting).  Unfortunately there are many zip codes that straddle more than one county so it’s not a direct translation.  I counted 1,413 zip codes in the US that overlap counties with different climate zones (see attached pivot table).  So this makes looking up climate zone by zip code challenging if the project is located near a climate transition region.

You may be aware, but the ASHRAE climate zones are changing a bit as of the publication of 169-2013.  I’m not aware of any published ASHRAE standards that have adopted the 2013 climate zones but the change will come in the next couple of years.  The climate zone changes did not make it into 90.1-2013 but my understanding is that they will by the time 2016 is published (I know there are SSPC 90.1 people on this list, has this reference been adopted yet?).  So the 169-2006 climate zone assignments are likely the ones that you’re familiar with.  I’ve attached both county assignment lists in case you’re interested.

Also, I’m not sure if you’re interested in California and Title 24, but California assigns specific state climate zones by zip code.  I’ve included these assignments in an attachment as well.  There are 1,702 counties in California according to the CEC I found.

Be aware when dealing with counties: if you want to turn these into lookups or pulldowns, the naming conventions (i.e. spelling and punctuation) between US federal census data and climate zone data are not entirely perfect and may require some cleaning up.  Things as simple as which letters are capitalized or whether compound names have a dash can case issues.

I hope this is helpful, good luck!

Scott P. West, P.E., LEED AP BD+C, BEAP, BEMP | JACOBS | Mechanical Engineer | Energy & Power Solutions | 817.222.8512 office | 817.897.1882 cell | scott.west at jacobs.com <mailto:scott.west at jacobs.com> | www.jacobs.com<http://www.jacobs.com/> | www.jacobs.com/energyportfolio<http://www.jacobs.com/energyportfolio>

From: dom_michaud at yahoo.com [mailto:dom_michaud at yahoo.com]
Sent: Thursday, June 04, 2015 11:27 AM
To: BldgSim Mailing List
Subject: [Bldg-sim] ASHRAE climate zones by ZIP code?

Hello all,

I've conducted about an hour web search looking for a simple csv or Excel file that maps ASHRAE climate zones to ZIP Codes, without success. I'm wondering if someone has come across such a file?

Thank you in advance for your help.

Dominique Michaud, PE


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