The Trombe Wall
A Trombe Wall is a solar heat-collecting wall. It can be made of concrete or adobe bricks, stone, or can even be a wall filled with water. The wall is placed behind a south facing glass window. The energy of the sun passes through the glass and heat is stored in the thermal mass of the wall. Often times the wall is painted black for better heat absorption. As the wall warms, the air in the space between the window and the wall heats up and rises. Vented openings in the top and bottom of the wall allow the heated air to rise and enter the living space behind the wall. As the air cools, it drops and flows back into the air space in front of the wall where it is reheated, rises and returns to the living space via the top vent. This type of air movement is called thermosiphoning or thermal looping [8]. As we learned above, heat moves towards cooler spaces. Ideally, at night, the Trombe Wall releases its heat to the interior of the home. But unless the vents are closed off, it would be more typical for the heat from the room to gravitate towards the glass windows and cooler outside air. Remember, heat likes to conduct itself to a cooler place.
So, while the wall might work in the daytime, it will probably lose most of its heat to the cooler outside air at night. Besides, it is rather odd to drive up to a beautiful house with large "picture" windows and see a big wall right behind the glass. But the use of the Trombe Wall helped lead to new ideas. We didn't go right from stone tools to computers and the use of solar energy in the home was and still is evolving. The Solar Slab represents the next step in that evolution.
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