Eames House in Pacific Palisades, Los Angeles, USA

About the Project

The Eames House (Latitude: 30.03 N, Longitude: 118.52 W, Elevation at the building’s ground floor: 38 m asl), a home of Charles and Ray Eames, was built in 1949 as Case Study House No. 8 which is one of a group of five houses located in Pacific Palisades, California, belonging to the influential Case Study Program initiated by John Entenza, editor of Arts and Architecture magazine to promote new models of affordable mass-producible housing utilizing technology of the modern age. The site, house, and contents, which became exhibit upon the death of Ray Eames in 1988, receive the international attention for the Californian modernism architecture of the period and the life of Charles and Ray, and help visitors understanding about the human side of modernism.

Three environmental monitoring stations, weather station, soil moisture station, and house environmental station, have been operating at the Eames House since April 2012 in order to support the conservation and repair project on its building envelope and fabrics that has been under way since September 2011. The weather station, installed at the southeastern edge of the property, records temperature, humidity, wind speed and direction, solar radiation, and precipitation. The volumetric moisture content and temperature of soil are recorded at 6 depths, which are surface-6 inches, 12 inches, 24 inches, 36 inches, 48 inches 60 inches at the soil moisture monitoring station located behind the concrete retaining wall on the west side of the house. Inside the house, measurements of temperature, humidity, and visible light level are conducted throughout the house and recorded every 15 minutes. A digital camera is triggered by the house station for capturing sun-shadow image of the living room every other minute between 6 am and 8 pm. Data collected from these stations are downloaded hourly to a base station at the Getty Center in Los Angeles, California through the internet service provided by a local area network provider. The data are then automatically processed and posted on the project web site.

Datalogger:

  • Campbell Scientific, Inc. (CSI) CR850 and CR1000

    • Sensors:

  • Rotronic Instruments, Inc, HC2S3 temperature and humidity sensors
  • R.M.Young Company 05103 Wind monitor
  • Li-Cor 200S Pyranometer and Photometric Sensors
  • Texas Electronics, Inc. TE525 rain gauge
  • Apogee Instruments, Inc., SI-111 Infrared radiometer

    • Power Supply:

  • Solarex Inc. SP20 Solar panel
  • CSI, CH100-SW Charging regulator
  • CSI, BP24 Rechargeable battery

    • Data Communications:

  • Campbell Scientific, Inc. RF416/401 Spread spectrum radios
  • Lantronix Inc., Wi-Box Wi-Fi receiver
  • Verizon FIOS local area network
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