You’ve probably already noticed the first hints of autumn: a blush of color in the leaves; earlier sunsets; and cooler evenings.  In just a few days, our calendars will catch up with nature, and we’ll begin the headlong rush toward winter.

Spring and autumn are the “fix-up” seasons, as we make ready for big changes in the weather. What you do over the next few weeks can make a tremendous difference to the size of your environmental footprint through the winter. So we’ve put together a few autumn to-do items to get you started. Sharpen your pencil — and start checking a few off your list!

In the home

* Check your weather stripping. You should do this twice a year. Look for cracks and deterioration, and make sure your door seals are tight.

* Review your attic insulation, particularly if your home is over 20 years old. This is the area in which you can make the most dramatic savings in annual heating bills. Take a ruler into the attic. If you have less than a foot of insulation, you probably need more.

* Seal your windows. Once you’re past warm weather, unplug and seal your window units. If it’s practical, store them. This will also allow you to seal your windows with energy-efficient plastic film.

* Replace incandescent bulbs with CFL or LED lighting. Shorter days and cooler temperatures means more time spent indoors. If you’ve not already re-lamped with energy efficient bulbs, now is the time.

* Install a programmable thermostat. Smart temperature control can easily save 10% of your annual heating and cooling bills – a significant reduction in your household’s carbon footprint. Basic programmable thermostats can be purchased for less than €25, so you’ll recover you investment very quickly.

In Your Yard

* Start a compost pile. Compost heaps need both green and brown matter to get cooking — but there’s no shortage of carbon-rich leaves in the fall. Grab then while you can. Check out our Green your garden section for more info.

* Consider planting trees. Some varieties do well in the gap between summer’s heat and the real onset of winter. Consult your local nursery or garden centre for advice on what sort of trees might be appropriate for autumn planting.

* Bring your summer herbs indoors. There’s no reason not to enjoy fresh basil, mint, and rosemary through the winter months — and having some green indoors will remind you of spring. It takes a few weeks to transition herbs to indoor living, so start before the weather turns.

In your car

* Most automobile owner’s manuals recommend a switch of engine oil weights between seasons. If you did this last summer, switch to your car’s recommended winter weight as soon as the weather cools.

* There’s really no such thing as a “safe” antifreeze, but if you’re getting your radiator flushed before winter, ask for a propylene glycol (PG) formula. It’s less toxic to children, pets, and wildlife than ethylene glycol (EG) coolants.

* Do you have a roof rack for carrying summer gear? Remove it until next year. Roof racks decrease your vehicle’s aerodynamic efficiency and hurts fuel mileage — particularly at motorway speeds.  While you’re at it, check you car for any unnecessary summer items, such as coolers or picnic gear. No need to burn fuel by carrying unnecessary weight.

* Evaluate your tires. Worn tread and improper tire pressure aren’t just bad for fuel economy — they’re not safe, particularly if you live in an area where icing roads are likely.  Inspect, rotate, and balance.  Whip out your tire pressure gauge at least once a month and check all four corners.

We’ll make this list a baker’s dozen: If you’re shopping for jumpers, jackets, and winter wear, start at your local secondhand store.  It’s not just price – though shopping at thrift shop and engaging in the new sale circuit can save your hundreds of euros – it’s putting perfectly good clothing back to use, rather than consuming fresh resources. You may also be supporting a worthy local charity your purchase.

(via Lighter Footstep )

Did you know that up to 50% of the average homes energy consumption goes to heating? And much of the building′s heat loss is through it′s windows – so not surprisingly up to 1/5th of your heating bill could be going to heat loss!

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 Modern life has become so complicated that it is often hard to know what is the right, green thing to do. For instance, which is better for the environment: tomatoes grown in Spain and transported to Ireland, or tomatoes grown here in heated greenhouses?

To tackle this complexity, researchers and companies are putting considerable effort into ‘carbon counting’ , to give us answers in the form of simple numbers.  Answers we can then use to reduce our carbon footprint.

For the last two years, I’ve been researching and compiling a new practical guide to green living, and if I learned one thing, it is that there are no easy answers.  Carbon counting is often only half the story, and if we really want to reduce our footprint, we need to look at the bigger picture.  With that in mind, I’ve drawn up 10 top tips (see below), that can help, and may even save you some time and money.

Focus only on CO2 and the ‘carbon footprint’, and the Spanish tomatoes will be ‘greener’, because the environmental cost of heating an Irish greenhouse is greater than transporting the fruits from Spain.

Perhaps a better question is to ask when is the best time to eat tomatoes?  Now, the answer becomes: in late summer, when they can be grown here without the need for heating.

Or take chicken.  It turns out that, when you do the sums, an organic chicken has a bigger carbon footprint than a conventional one, kg for kg, because organic birds take longer and need more food to reach a comparable weight.

Again, rather than focusing solely on CO2, and encouraging consumers to eat green (conventional) chicken, we need to persuade people to eat less meat, regardless of its carbon footprint.

Which brings me to my 10 green commandments.  Instead of trying to put numbers on things — numbers that will change every time some step in the process changes, forcing us to recalculate, and revise the listings — I prefer simple rules of thumb.

And that’s what I’ve tried to do in my new book, Drive like a Woman, Shop like a Man.  From the 101 tried and tested tips, here are 10 that I hope will help you to live a little more lightly over the coming year, and may even save you some valuable time and money.

1. Get free stuff – try sourcing things you need free on Dublinwaste.ie and Freecycle

2.Eat less meat. (Thou shalt not kill, unnecessarily!)

3. Use off-peak electricity – reduce peak demand, spread the load, and we won’t need to build so many new power plants.

4. Get an SUV! ( A superior urban vehicle — with just two wheels)

5. Eat some of your garden. Forget Spain, grow your own tomatoes.

6. Read newspapers online — quicker, and saves on paper

7.Choose what you wear ‘carefully’ – avoid clothes that need dry cleaning, and look for organic cotton

8.Eat the seasons. Now is the season of parsnips, carrots, and winter greens.

9. Drink sustainable water. From a tap, not a truck

10. Spread the word –  if you find something useful, don’t forget to tell your friends and neighbours.

And a happy Chinese New Year to you.

A modern version of the typical ′block-built′ wall system uses insulating blocks which are manufactured using aerated concrete, pumice, ash and other lightweight aggregates.

Insulating concrete is a different form of construction that has appeared over the years in various guises. Recent forms of this building method use an insulating mould or shuttering system for walls and normal concrete is poured into this to form the load-bearing part of the wall. A less well-known type of cast insulating concrete was tried in the USA after WWII.

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There are several reasons to build sustainably. Not the least of which are the rising cost of fuel, the depletion of our natural resources, pollution and global warming.

Here are some more reasons:

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There is always a silver lining behind the grey clouds. This time the grey clouds are represented by the current hibernating housing market and the soaring costs of food and fuel. These things might be temporary, but who knows?

The silver lining is an opportunity for designers and home-builders to persuade people to ′right-size′ their house.

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The green building community has been responsible for a resurgence in the use of eco-friendly plasters. Essentially, a plaster is a combination of three elemental parts; a structural component (usually sand), a binding agent (e.g. lime) and a filler (some use fibres to provide strength). The majority of buildings in this country are plastered using a sand/cement/water mix, but this is unsuitable for walls that need to breathe.

A typical modern lime plaster consists of a mix of hydrated lime putty, sand and hemp fibre and is an excellent plaster for most types of breathable wall construction. It can be either home made or bought from a specialist supplier.

However, lime has to be manufactured from quarried material and hemp has to be harvested. A plaster with even better ′green′ credentials than lime & hemp can be made from the soil on your building site.

EARTH PLASTERS: Earth plasters are ideally suited to straw bale, stone, rammed earth or timber walls. In our climate, care is needed at the design stage if it is to be used externally. Internally, it will provide a silky, glassy finish with smooth curves and a wonderful warm feeling. It is also easily repaired. Given that the materials for earth plasters are obtained on site and mixed by hand (or feet!), the embodied energy is very low, it uses no chemicals and the finished product is recyclable

The area used to extract the soil could be from your foundation excavations, or a part of the garden which could later become a pond. Soil selection must ensure that no organic material is included (so a peaty soil is to be avoided) and you will need to screen out any pebbles, roots or other foreign objects. Ideally, you should look for a combination of clay, sand & silt; and mix this with water and straw. Clay is commonly found under peat in many of our countryside areas.

Experimentation is required to achieve a workable mix with good adhesive quality and durable finish. Mixing is often done using the time-honoured method of treading with feet – kids (and adults) love it. It can be applied by hand or trowel depending on the required finish and after drying, should be painted using an alis (a powdered clay mixed with earth-based pigments), thus avoiding synthetic chemical paints. Why not try it out first on the rear wall of a shed for example?

If this seems all too daunting, there are some specialist plastering firms who will carry out this type of work for you. Just remember that if they are importing their materials, it defeats the object to a certain extent, but is still a healthy option for both the building and its occupants.

Note: Before you use earth plasters on a new build, check with your designer to see if the local building regulations impose any restrictions on its use.

In addition to the people wishing to live in greener buildings, a number also want their homes to be as healthy as possible. This poses an added challenge for the designer when specifying materials because many modern materials, which contribute to improving the performance of an environmentally friendly building, are unfortunately also regarded as posing a risk to your long-term health. These include for example; certain types of insulation, wood products and furniture, paints and wood-stains, etc.Many of the health risks involved are higher when the material is exposed within the living space of a dwelling, whilst some are regarded as posing a high risk when they are being worked at during construction. For instance, very small fibres from insulation can easily pass through small gaps in the ceiling or wall and enter the living space, where they are regarded as causing or worsening respiratory problems to the occupants. Some board products give off a fine dust when cut, and the power tools used in the process invariably circulate the dust, worsening the effect. Other materials emit artificial VOCs (Volatile Organic Compounds) under normal conditions and high levels of these will also pose a health risk to varying degrees. Burning certain materials can be a major risk to health.

Many materials and processes have been blamed as contributory factors in the well-known ′Sick Building Syndrome′. Poor air-conditioning and/or ventilation, and the use of certain appliances are believed to exacerbate the effect.

 SOLUTIONS: Talk to your designer, builder or supplier about any areas of concern. If he/she tries to reassure you by telling you that certain products are totally safe, find out if this opinion is known fact based on scientific research or is simply personal opinion. Then ask for evidence. For back-up information, check out the following website; http://www.healthybuilding.net/index.html Guidance to the suitability of materials is also given by approval schemes such as the ′Blue Angel′. Have a browse through  and http://ecolabelling.org/