Trombe Wall

Our home was built with a large portion of the south wall constructed as a unvented Trombe Wall. Usually a Trombe wall is depicted with vents to move the air through the wall  but it turns out an unvented system has a proven track record. I’ve encountered a few nay-sayers to the Trombe wall concept but the information I’ve gathered about performance outweighs the arguments against the concept. Here is some of my research on the subject.

The most convincing paper took data from the Los Alamos experiments in the 1970’s and applied modern computer modeling with positive results for the effectiveness of a Trombe Wall system.

DEVELOPMENT AND VALIDATION OF THE UNVENTED TROMBE WALL MODEL IN ENERGY PLUS, Peter Ellis 2003

The original Los Alamos experiments:

The Effect of Design Parameter Changes on Passive Systems_LOS ALAMOS

And more:
Simple_Trombe_Wall_A_Comparison_Of_Different Glazings

Building a Better Trombe Wall NREL

COMPARATIVE ANALYSIS OF ACTIVE AND PASSIVE SOLAR HEATING SYSTEMS WITH TRANSPARENT INSULATION

DYNAMIC MEASUREMENT OF HEAT LOSS COEFFICIENTS THROUGH TROMBE WALL GLAZING SYSTEMS

Evaluation of the Zion National Park Trombe Wall

Glazed Building Wall as Solar Collector

Glazing and the Trombe Wall

Thermal Storage Wall Design Manual

Passive Facade Solutions Trombe Wall

Trombe Walls in Low-Energy Buildings

Van Geet Off-Grid Home