What a Title 24 form is, and where to get one

How to read a Title 24 form code

A Title 24 form is one of the compliance certificates in the California Energy Code’s own document set, and the blank ones are published free by the California Energy Commission on three pages split by building type: single-family, low-rise multifamily, and nonresidential, hotel/motel and high-rise multifamily. The form most people are hunting for is not listed on any of them. The performance-path certificate — CF1R-PRF-01-E on a house, LMCC-PRF-01-E on a low-rise apartment building, NRCC-PRF on a commercial one — comes out of CEC-approved compliance software, and the CEC’s own pages point you at the software rather than at a blank. There is nothing to download and type into.

That is the misunderstanding underneath most Title 24 form questions. Here is how to decode a form code you are holding, and which blanks genuinely exist.

Three families, split by building type

The opening letters say which building type a form belongs to and what job it does. Each of the three CEC pages opens with its own abbreviation key:

• CF1R, CF2R, CF3R — single-family. Certificate of Compliance, Certificate of Installation, Certificate of Verification, in that order. “Single-family” is broader than it sounds: the CEC’s multifamily manual puts single-family homes, duplexes and all townhouses in this set, regardless of how many habitable stories they have. The three are laid out on the CF1R, CF2R and CF3R page.
• LMCC, LMCI, LMCV — low-rise multifamily, same three jobs. Multifamily buildings of three or fewer habitable stories, mixed use included, use LMCC-PRF-01-E.
• NRCC, NRCI, NRCV, NRCA — nonresidential, hotel/motel and high-rise multifamily. Compliance, installation, verification, plus a fourth the residential families do not have: acceptance. Multifamily of four or more habitable stories lands here, on the nonresidential performance certificate. More on that set in NRCC documentation.

More on the residential certificate itself on the CF1R page, and the three-story line in multifamily work.

The middle segment says what the form covers

Between the family and the number sits a three-letter category, taken from the section headings each forms page is organized under. They are not the same across all three families:

• Scope — NCB (newly constructed buildings), ADD (additions), ALT (alterations), EXC (existing conditions), PRF (performance). Of these, only PRF turns up outside the single-family set.
• Systems — ENV (envelope), MCH (mechanical), PLB (plumbing, covering both domestic hot water and pool and spa heating), ELC (electrical power distribution and electric ready). PRC (process systems) and CXR (building commissioning) appear only on the multifamily and nonresidential sides.
• Lighting — LTG on the single-family side, where it is a single form. LTI (indoor), LTO (outdoor) and LTS (sign) on both the low-rise multifamily and the nonresidential side.
• Solar — PVB (photovoltaics and battery storage), SRA (solar ready) and STH (solar water heating) in the single-family set; SAB (solar and battery) in the other two.

So a CF2R-MCH-02-E is a single-family certificate of installation for a mechanical measure, and specifically the whole-house-fan form; an NRCC-LTI-E is a nonresidential certificate of compliance for indoor lighting. The last letter is worth reading too:

• -H — tied to a measure that requires field verification and diagnostic testing. On the low-rise multifamily page the CEC states that any form ending in -H must be registered, and gives LMCI-MCH-23a-H as its own example.
• -A and -F — nonresidential acceptance forms. The CEC splits them by subject rather than by signer: lighting-control and mechanical acceptance sits on -A forms, covered-process and envelope acceptance on -F forms. For the lighting and mechanical ones the CEC says the work is done by a field technician or by a Certified Acceptance Test Technician through an ATTCP provider, then submitted to the inspector.
• -E — everything else. I have not found a CEC document that defines that letter, so I would not read anything into it.

The numerals are not decoration, at least on the multifamily side. The CEC says an LMCI without a numeral in its form number does not require registration, and an LMCI with one does.

Why the performance form is software output

The CEC puts it plainly in the 2025 single-family manual: newly constructed buildings using the performance approach are required to use Energy Commission approved compliance software, while additions and alterations generally use the prescriptive approach, with the performance approach optional. The authorized programs are a closed list under Title 24, Part 1, Section 10-109. For 2025 that list is CBECC, the CEC’s own public-domain tool, plus three third-party programs: EnergyPro, IES VE for nonresidential new construction, and Right-Energy Title 24 for single-family new construction. Section 10-103(a)1A separately requires every Certificate of Compliance to conform to a format, informational order and content approved by the Energy Commission, so a home-made version showing the same numbers is not a substitute. Which tool covers what is on the compliance software page.

Registration is the second half. On the residential side it is required for any project that requires a CF3R, and not every project does — the CEC’s manual puts it as all newly constructed homes, most additions and many alterations. Where it applies, only a certificate displaying the registration number assigned by an approved ECC registry is acceptable at plan check. LMCVs are always registered, and so are NRCVs. A multifamily building of four or more habitable stories, complying on the nonresidential performance certificate, is not registered through an ECC-Provider even when the project has ECC measures. I register through CHEERS. What triggers verification in the first place is in HERS and ECC field verification.

The forms you genuinely can download

Plenty of them are ordinary PDFs. The single-family page sorts its listings by whether the project requires field verification and diagnostic testing, not by compliance path — both groups are prescriptive forms. The ones for projects with no field verification, CF1R-ADD-02-E and CF1R-ALT-05-E among them, may be downloaded and completed before they go to a building department. The rest, CF1R-NCB-01-E and CF1R-ALT-01-E included, are prescriptive as well but have to be registered with an ECC-Provider first. On the nonresidential side the NRCC and NRCI forms are static PDFs the CEC says can be filled in with Adobe’s Add Text tool, or online through the Energy Code Ace Virtual Compliance Assistant.

Lighting compliance forms

Nonresidential indoor lighting is NRCC-LTI-E for compliance and NRCI-LTI-E for installation; outdoor is NRCC-LTO-E and NRCI-LTO-E; sign lighting is NRCC-LTS-E and NRCI-LTS-E. Lighting controls then get acceptance testing on their own forms — NRCA-LTI-02-A through NRCA-LTI-05-A indoors, NRCA-LTO-02-A outdoors — and that testing is a certified technician’s scope, not mine. On a tenant improvement it is usually the line nobody budgeted for. Single-family lighting is one form, CF2R-LTG-01-E, and it is a certificate of installation — the electrician’s paperwork, not the design set’s. The requirements behind the forms are on the Title 24 lighting page.

Check the cycle before you download

The 2025 code applies to permit applications submitted on or after January 1, 2026. Anything applied for before that stays on the 2022 cycle, and the CEC still publishes the 2022 forms on their own pages. If you are not sure which cycle a form came from, the residential titles give it away: the 2022 versions say HERS where the 2025 versions say ECC. Effective January 1, 2026 the HERS Program no longer supports Energy Code compliance demonstration; that scope moved to the Energy Code Compliance program, HERS Providers became ECC-Providers and HERS Raters became ECC-Raters. What else changed is in the 2025 code changes.

One naming wrinkle to expect. In the 2025 nonresidential set the CEC dropped the numerals — NRCC-ENV-E, NRCC-MCH-E, and the performance certificate itself prints as NRCC-PRF-E — while the single-family and low-rise multifamily sets kept theirs, CF1R-PRF-01-E and LMCC-PRF-01-E. The CEC’s own multifamily manual still writes the nonresidential one the old way, NRCC-PRF-01-E, so you will see it both ways.

On the Certificate of Compliance I sign as documentation author and you sign as the responsible person. If a plan checker asked for a form by code and you are not sure which, forward the comment — plan-check corrections are a large share of what I do. The rest of the vocabulary is in the Title 24 glossary.

Prices

Flat fees, in writing before I start. No hourly, no bid package, no change-order games — the number on the quote is the number on the invoice.

One honest note

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