Short answer
We list a facility only if its own website says it offers climate-controlled units, and we show you the exact line we found. A script reads each facility's page, looks for climate-control wording, and throws out false matches. Of 10,359 facilities we checked, 4,496 passed.
Every facility on this site has told the public, on its own website, that it offers climate-controlled units. We don’t take that from a review, a marketplace tag or a guess. We read the facility’s own page and quote it on the listing.
Why we check this way
Climate control has no industry definition. An article on the Self Storage Association’s site says no group “has put to paper a definition or requirement.” The fairest test we can apply is the facility’s own claim, shown to you word for word, so you can judge it and then ask the right questions.
The steps
- Start from Google Maps listings for self storage. Each one has a name, address, hours, rating and website. Every one of the 10,359 listings we checked had a website.
- Load the facility’s own page. A script strips out menus, headers, footers and forms, so it reads the page content rather than the site navigation.
- Search for the wording. Phrases like “climate-controlled,” “temperature-controlled,” “humidity-controlled” and “heated and cooled.”
- Drop false matches. “Non-climate-controlled” and “we don’t offer climate control” don’t count. Text repeated on nearly every page of a chain’s site is treated as site-wide marketing and ignored.
- Grade the match. A clear mention in that location’s own page content rates High or Medium. A mention found only in hidden page data rates Low.
- List only High and Medium, with the line quoted on the listing.
How the 10,359 facilities came out
- 4,496Listed: own site says climate-controlled
- 2,039Checked, no valid mention found
- 3,009Couldn't be read or checked
What we leave out on purpose
- Low-confidence matches. If the wording is only in page code a visitor never sees, we don’t list it.
- Site-wide boilerplate. For chains, a sentence on every location’s page doesn’t prove that location offers it. For 81 facilities, that was the only mention.
- Facilities that say no. 31 pages included wording that said the facility does not offer climate control.
What we don’t check
We check the claim, not the building. We don’t visit facilities, test their thermostats or measure humidity. That’s why every listing tells you exactly what the facility said, and why we suggest questions to ask before renting.
We also can’t read sites that block automated visits. That’s the main reason some large chains are missing. See why some big storage chains are missing.
See it on a listing
Every listing shows a proof box with the quoted line and the month we checked. Open any facility in Houston to see one, or read the full method on how we verify.