Trombe wall

From outside to inside, a Trombe wall consists of a layer or more of glass, a narrow air space, and a masonry wall coated with a dark, heat-absorbing material. Energy […]

A Trombe wall is used to reduce the use of a building's heating and cooling systems through passive solar design.

Regular readers will know that we tend to favour simple, non-mechanical methods of green design, like passive solar heating instead of, say, thermal solar collectors with evacuated tubes and pumps. One

Named after engineer Felix Trombe, the system combines glass and a dark, heat-absorbing material to conduct heat slowly into the house

If you have big windows to the south, you already know you are saving a lot on heating costs on sunny winter days, IMO. With this simple DIY system you can...

This article is part of Ungreen, a series curated by Hidden Architecture where we attempt to create a resistance against some of the dogmas assimilated within contemporary discourse that sustainable architecture has to be “green”. We want to recover the ancestral knowledge that was shared among generations throughout history of humanity and defines how urban […]

Image 7 of 29 from gallery of Nature & Environment Learning Centre / Bureau SLA. Photograph by Filip Dujardin

This article is part of Ungreen, a series curated by Hidden Architecture where we attempt to create a resistance against some of the dogmas assimilated within contemporary discourse that sustainable architecture has to be “green”. We want to recover the ancestral knowledge that was shared among generations throughout history of humanity and defines how urban […]

A Trombe wall retrofit workshop that I was leading in the late-1970s in New Mexico. To this simple frame, a layer of glazing was added, and sunlight would heat up the dark-painted wall. Photo: Alex Wilson. Click on image to enlarge. Last week I wrote about sunspaces and how they can be used to deliver passive solar heat to our homes. Another option for passive solar heating is the Trombe wall, or thermal storage wall. While the sunspace is an "isolated-gain" solar system, a Trombe wall is an…

So we’re into another week about heat emissions in bodies and buildings and the passive air techniques that can be used to control those functions.The Addington reading addresses the more historica…