Title 24 is part of the California Building Standards Code, specifically focused on energy efficiency in residential and nonresidential buildings. It's designed to:
Under Title 24, builders are now required to:
The intent is commendable. But the execution? That’s where the problems begin.
California’s 2022 Title 24 update made electric water heating mandatory for most new single-family homes. The default tech? Heat pump water heaters (HPWHs).
These systems work by drawing heat from ambient air and transferring it to water using a refrigeration cycle. In theory, they’re up to 3x more efficient than traditional electric resistance heaters.
But here’s the catch:
Worse yet, they typically demand:
All of this pushes builders to over-engineer systems, eat up valuable square footage, or risk code violations.
It assumes that compliance = performance.
But as any builder knows, just because something passes code doesn’t mean it works for your project or client.
Here’s what we’re seeing on the ground:
This is where Solthera comes in.
Solthera’s thermal battery uses phase change material (PCM) to store thermal energy during the day—using grid, solar, or heat pump input—and deliver it on demand for:
Solthera solves problems HPWHs create:
🏗️ Project: 650 sq ft backyard ADU
📍 Location: Sacramento, CA
💡 Challenge: Meet Title 24 with limited panel capacity and no room for tanked HPWH
🔧 Solution: Solthera thermal battery charged by 2 solar panels + daytime grid
✅ Result:
We’re not saying Title 24 is wrong. We’re saying it needs better implementation pathways.
One-size-fits-all mandates rarely work in construction—especially across climate zones and building types as diverse as California’s.
Solthera empowers builders to:
And it does all of that with no gas, no emissions, and no moving parts.
Solthera was created to solve the real-world friction between policy and performance. And it’s already doing just that in dozens of California projects.