How Cali-Graf Applies CRC R329.6 and LAFD Setbacks to a Solar Layout

The City of Los Angeles values come from the LAFD form for one- and two-family homes, Requirement No. 96. Custom also covers eaves and the clearance around obstacles, and typing any width into the table switches the rules to Custom starting from the values already there — useful when a plan reviewer asks for something specific.

How each code section reads, and what a plan checker looks for, is covered in how skylights, chimneys and vents change a solar layout and solar permits in Los Angeles.

Two things follow from that:

• A strip in an odd place means a mistyped edge, such as a hip read as a rake. Selecting the edge shows its type and the reason (for example "Automatic: Valley — both faces slope toward it"); pressing another type fixes it, and Back to automatic undoes the override.
• Faces without panels still matter. A hip or valley is an edge shared by two faces; if the neighboring face isn't traced, the same edge reads as an outer, sloped edge — a rake — and gets a rake's strip. So trace every face that touches a face with panels, as the help center asks.

The Roof faces list shows how much each face loses: on Cali-Graf's demo home, the west face reads 596 ft² (455 usable). Pressing F hides the strips for a moment to look at the roof underneath; they still apply.

Cali-Graf tracks this as the layout changes. Once panels are on the roof, it compares their plan-view area with that of all the traced faces — another reason to trace the whole roof, not only the faces with panels — and ticks Solar covers more than 33% of the roof by itself (66% when Home has fire sprinklers is ticked); before any panels are placed, the box can be ticked by hand. When the share crosses the line, the ridge strip grows from 18″ to 36″, and Fill roof notices and lays the panels out again. A designer adding panels elsewhere to reach a target size can see the cost at once — a row lost along the whole ridge — instead of finding it at plan check.

Panels → Fire pathways checks the state code's pathway rule as Cali-Graf applies it:

• each face with solar needs a 36-inch pathway from eave to ridge — on that face, on the next face, or 18″ + 18″ straddling a hip or valley;
• the roof needs at least two pathways on separate faces, one of them facing the street or driveway;
• faces of 2:12 or flatter don't need one.

The panel lists every face with solar — has a pathway, still needs one, or low enough not to need one — and then the roof as a whole. An edge whose setback is already 36 inches or more (or 18 inches on both sides of a hip or valley) counts as a pathway on its own — under the City of LA rules, usually the 3-ft rake strips and the 18-inch strips on both sides of a hip — and the editor notes that the setbacks there are already wide enough to serve as a pathway.

Missing pathways can be added three ways: Fill roof adds them as it lays out the panels; after panels are moved by hand, Fix pathways adds them where they push out the fewest panels; and selecting a rake, hip or valley gives Add fire pathway here (or Remove fire pathway). The street-facing pathway is the one check the editor can't make: Cali-Graf doesn't know where the street is, so the designer looks at the image and ticks One pathway faces the street or driveway.

• The street side. Confirmed by hand, as above.
• Emergency escape and rescue openings. R329.6.3 keeps panels off the roof below a bedroom escape window and asks for a 36-inch pathway to it. The editor has no setting for these openings; one way to keep panels off that part of a face is to draw it as a polygon obstacle, which Fill roof goes around.
• Exceptions. R329.6 exempts, among others, detached non-habitable structures such as a garage or carport, and roofs where the enforcing agency has decided rooftop operations won't be used. The editor draws the same setbacks on every roof in the design, so on an exempt garage it errs toward fewer panels.
• The final answer. Cali-Graf is a design and proposal tool and doesn't produce permit plan sets; whether a layout passes is decided by the plan reviewer and the local fire department. Common reasons it doesn't are collected in why solar inspections fail.

Product facts on this page come from Cali-Graf's own help center and the pages linked below; figures in examples come from the stated inputs. Features, limits and supported utilities change; each was verified October 16, 2026.

1. Cali-Graf Help — Fire setbacks on the roof
2. Cali-Graf Help — Choose fire setback rules: California, City of LA or custom
3. Cali-Graf Help — Fire pathways
4. Cali-Graf Help — Edge types: eave, rake, ridge, hip, valley
5. Cali-Graf Help — Why panels turn red
6. Cali-Graf Help — Draw roof faces
7. California Residential Code 2025 — Section R329.6, roof access, pathways and setbacks
8. LADBS / LAFD — Fire Department Reference Requirements for Rooftop PV Systems on One and Two Family Dwellings (Requirement No. 96)