Small-Town Idea May Again Have Day in the Sun
It’s a tiny town. Dairy farms, unpaved roads, a lot of mobile homes.
Neighbors know each other in Pala.
Then there’s that odd little housing tract.
Just outside the Indian reservation in this North County community sits an encampment of eight houses, just 300 square feet apiece.
One resembles an aquarium--its entire east wall made of glass-sandwiched water. Electrical wires dangle from the water wall.
At another house, a water bed bladder was installed on the roof--which made the roof cave in.
Although nestled into a quiet, isolated hillside, these pre-fab, stucco and wood-frame houses use an 8-foot-tall, chain-link fence to keep out the world. It’s a miniature gated community. And the gate is topped with razor wire.
A note posted on each of eight front doors adds to the mystery: “DO NOT ENTER OR OPEN THE DOOR. EXPERIMENT IN PROGRESS.”
It’s easy to miss the sign posted in one corner of the compound. Faded and peeling, it reads: “Pala Passive Solar Project. A cooperative project between San Diego Gas & Electric Company and Southern California Edison.”
Should have known. Scientists.
Although the utility companies’ experiment ended long ago, interest in the site has not been abandoned. An architecture professor at UCLA, Baruch Givoni, has acquired the buildings on behalf of the university, and hopes to begin research soon on methods of storing night cold for use the next day.
Givoni’s work in passive cooling--lunar power, for the unscientific--captured the interest of an energy institute in Berkeley. The institute has provided Givoni with research money, but it has yet to give the nod to use Pala’s site.
“Everyone is frightened by the distance,” Givoni said. “I would be happy if I had Pala in Los Angeles.”
In 1981, energy experts designed and built the homes at the Pala research site, embarking on a side-by-side comparison of passive solar energy devices.
During studies that lasted through 1986, the heating and cooling traits of eight scaled-down homes were tested. In true tract-home style, the names of the models varied, though the basic design was the same.
There was the Conventional model (used as a control); the Roof Pond model (with roof-crushing water bed); the Water Wall model; the Attached Greenhouse model, and the High Mass model (looks the same, materials are denser).
By 1986, the monitoring work at the homes was complete. Summaries of the findings went to architectural and construction firms. Site visits then dwindled.
As supervision dropped off, homeless people from the surrounding valley began trying out the houses, conducting their own studies of a sort on warmth. Sheriff’s deputies shooed away intruders. Still, looters broke into one of the homes and stole a computer that compiled data. The concertina wire went up shortly after.
Security concerns and the onslaught of scrub brush prompted the utilities to look for a group willing to take over the experimental housing project. SDG&E; officials said they were looking for a conscientious tenant to watch over the development.
“We were looking for someone to continue work on heat-efficient systems . . . also someone who would keep the weeds from taking over,” said Jim Miles, a development coordinator at SDG&E.;
The utilities were reluctant to bulldoze the buildings, having sunk $500,000 into the project--including considerable construction costs. The options were few: find someone to take over or raze the passive-solar enclave and put up a power transfer station.
In stepped Givoni.
The houses, although in disrepair, were just what he was looking for. They were designed to test thermal theories, and the equipment was already in place.
Givoni negotiated a free, three-year repeating contract with SDG&E;, on the condition that the site be kept tidy. If grant money was secured later, $500 would be charged each month.
The price seemed right. UCLA took over the complex in 1987. But still it lies dormant.
This winter, Givoni was contracted by an institute in Berkeley to conduct the passive-cooling studies. Now he is eager to refurbish the experimental houses.
“In Pala, we have the best facility in the country for this experiment,” said Givoni, who has studied passive-cooling techniques in Davis, Lake Tahoe, Mexico, India and China.
Because of Pala’s climate and the site’s exposure, Givoni says, “an alternative will not give us the same quality of information.”
But administrators at the California Institute of Energy Efficiency in Berkeley, who hired Givoni and six other researchers for the project, are yet to be won over by Pala’s solar fixer-uppers.
They are not much to look at: shreds of reflective coating remain on windows that are not broken. A busted toilet bowl and dismantled kitchen sink have been discarded near one house.
“We’re still really at the analytical stage in our research,” institute director James Cole said. “When we have some findings on paper that look interesting, we’ll think about doing a field study, and then we’ll begin considering a site.”
Givoni says the decision on whether to use Pala will be made by the end of this month. Cole says it will be more like the end of this year.
Their theoretical concerns are lost on area residents, who wonder what happened to the mysterious experiment.
What those tiny houses lack in stature they make up for in curiousness, neighbors say.
“Last time I saw anyone over there was a couple of years ago,” said Don Burnett, 51, a truck driver at H. G. Fenton Material Co., a sand-dredging plant across the street. “The power company brought guests by every once in a while, I guess. That’s when they liked to show the place off. It’s been getting less and less attention lately. Seems like no one cares about the houses anymore. I figure people just kind of forgot ‘em.”
Mel Lavato, director of the Pala Indian Reservation’s youth club, has lived down the road from the project since before it existed. After the reservation’s council confirmed that no safety hazard was posed by the experiment, Lavato says, people paid the site little mind.
Driving by today, Lavato still wonders what it’s for.
“It’s just there,” he said.
