I don't have a picture or diagram of the trombe wall. It's seen at 1:45 in the video. It's just a half-trombe wall. The downstairs south-facing wall is rammed earth, like the rest of the house, with windows that are not very large since the real winter glazing for the downstairs is the seasonally attached
greenhouse. Upstairs, the south wall is largely windows, with a concrete-block wall up to only 2.5 feet high (the half-trombe wall), inside the floor-to-ceiling window, to absorb, store and moderate some of the sun's direct radiation. In the video at 1:10 and 1:45, Rohit is sitting on it. It's about 6 inches thick (because the standard cement or earth bricks in our area are 6x6x12 inches). It's painted black on the outside, facing the glass, to increase heat absorption from the sunlight. There is a 5- or 6-inch gap between the wall and the window -- That might not be ideal thermally, but I've lived with these type of half-trombe walls at our school for over 20 years, and being able to stick your arm inside for cleaning or maintenance is important. The beam above those windows is a reinforced
concrete beam, because the roof is earthen and very heavy. All other lintels in the house are
wood.
The
greenhouse is attached to an iron frame with a type of long wavy wires called "clips" (I'm sure there's an American term but I don't know it) that you wedge into a narrow aluminum gutter that is bolted to the iron frame. It takes a small crew, at least 4 or 5
people, to put it on in November (excuse for a party to invite some of my former students), but only takes 30 minutes if at least one person knows how to do it. You hang the piece of UV-resistant plastic out over the top of the frame, pull it tight along the top, and wedge the "clips" (wavy long stiff wires) into the top edge of the frame, locking the top of the plastic in place. Then it's pretty easy to go down and clip the sides. We fix the bottom with a trench and soil, rather than clips. It is said to be helpful to to attach the
greenhouse on a hot midday, when the plastic is as stretched and flexible as it's going to get (though maybe the metal frames expand more so maybe it doesn't matter). It takes only two people to remove the plastic in springtime.
The floors are not vented to each other, especially in winter, when the thermal buffer zone, ie stairwell and the east-west corridor along the north edge of the house, is closed off from the south facing rooms. The upstairs rooms do get a bit too cold at night in winter, these first two years, below 10C, which is not very nice. I was away for January this year, and I slept down in the living room for January last year, as did Rohit this recent January while I was away. I arrived on Feb. 8th and the house started warming up within a few days, and is comfortable even upstairs now, in late February.
The roof insulation is not great and I'm planning to improve it. It's only natural "straw-clay," about 6 or 8 inches thick. There's a gap 8 inches thick between the horizontal joists, hidden by the thin wooden ceiling, and I'm planning to put some more serious insulation in those spaces this year. I
think it will make several degrees of difference. If the upstairs bedrooms stay above 12C on January nights, I'll be happy.