Trombe wall

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

Learn how a massive concrete wall collects and stores solar energy through a bank of specially placed windows to help heat this Michigan home.

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

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 […]

Diagram of a Trombe wall. Format Diagram Credit Image courtesy of MIT OpenCourseWare. MIT OpenCourseWare Course of Origin 4.401 Introduction to Building Technology Spring 2006 MIT Course Instructor Andersen, Marilyne MIT Department Architecture License http://ocw.mit.edu/terms Publisher MIT OpenCourseWare

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…

This is where our Rocket Mass Heater will be different, the mass the exhaust passes up through the vertical TROMBE WALL. Since we live on the coast in Oregon, we do not have a big need for a lot of heat, but to have no heating bills would be a blessing.

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...

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