Every night before I go to bed I’m busy slaying vampires. Not the blood sucking type, but the energy sucking type.

Instead of a wooden stake, my fingers fight these energy suckers as I turn power switches off to kill anything on standby.

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Today is  Blog Action Day and the theme is climate change. So what better day to write about a climate-saving feature packed house that I visited in Sydney on Sustainable House Day.

Visiting John’s sustainable house in Gordon was more than just checking out rainwater tanks, solar panels and a vege patch. It was more of a journey through John’s concepts and philosophies in life, which all in some way focused on sustainability. (more…)

My free Greentech Australia tickets have arrived. If you are in Sydney, Greentech is from November 7-8 , and from the time of writing free tickets were available at the Greentech website.

Greentech is all about green building, design and technology. There are some great speakers, talks and exhibitions. Find out more.

As the hot summer months approach it’s important to ensure gardens are in excellent shape waterwise.

Here’s a little article I wrote for G magazine a while back. Just saw it online.

The Alternative Technology Association (ATA) also recently released an excellent book about conserving water around the home.

The book, Water not down the drain, tells you about:

• Choosing rainwater tanks and harvesting rainwater
• Supplying rainwater to the house and garden
• Setting up a grey water diversion system
• Grey water treatment systems
• Grey water health and environmental concerns
• Creating a rain garden to capture storm water
• Cutting greenhouse emissions while saving water

Interested? You can order it online through the ATA.

I am constantly harassing my husband to switch off unused and standby lights in our house. Wherever he goes in our house he seems to leave a trail of lit, vacant rooms and a plethora of standby lights on.

The one light he especially loves to leave on is his computer monitor light, which I religiously turn off nightly.

So, he did make me giggle when he sent me this article about the Intelliplug. It’s a plug that contains a switching system that automatically switches off attached peripherals when the PC is turned off. In other words, when the PC is turned off at the end of the night then monitor and speakers will automatically power-off too. A PC monitor on standby overnight can use the same amount of energy as a microwave would need to cook six dinners. Although, my husband denies this

Anyway, the Intelliplug is available in the UK but not here yet. Hopefully, it is on its way – maybe in time for Christmas. Or maybe there is something out there already in Australia, which I don’t know about yet?

I’m really looking forward to next weekend because it’s Sustainable House Day (September 13-14). Finally, I’m going to be in Sydney to enjoy some houses in my area – and this year there seems like quite a lot.

A few years back I was in Canberra so I checked out a few houses there. The one thing that amazed me with the houses there was how cold it was outside, but how toasty warm (with no heating) it was inside due to solar passive designs and thermal mass. The houses also gave me some good ideas of what I could do in my own house.

The event is happening across Australia and New Zealand so check out some houses in your area for some good ideas and inspiration.

If you do, please tell us about the places you visited in the comments section below.

This Saturday (March 29) at 8pm don’t forget to turn off all your lights and unused appliances at the switch to show your support for Earth Hour.

The event, organised by WWF, began last year in Sydney where over 2.2 million residents and over 2,100 businesses turned off lights and appliances for one hour to help reduce the city’s greenhouse gas pollution. WWF says that this lead to a 10.2% energy reduction across the city.

This year the event has gone global with another 23 world cities formally signing up.

With 24 global cities on board for Earth Hour, WWF anticipates that more than 30 million people will be involved this year.

If you haven’t already, sign up for the event on the Earth Hour website. You don’t have to be in one of the 24 cities to show your support.

Not sure what I’ll be doing yet. I think another candle lit dinner with my family.

What are you planning? Or what did you do for Earth Hour?

I love beer, especially now that I am pregnant and shouldn’t drink it

My husband brews a pretty good drop from our garage, which usually comes top of my list for taste.

But now there’s a new beer I’d like to try (when I can) and that’s Cascade Green, which Cascade claims is 100% carbon offset.

What does this mean? Well according to the Cascade brewery, all remaining greenhouse gas emissions from the beer are offset from the moment the company sources its hops to when the beer bottles are placed in recycling bins.

Cascade also says that it uses bio-degradable vegetable oil based inks in the beer’s packaging, and the carton is 100% recyclable.

Have you tried this beer? Let me know what you think.

Another good news solar story from Adelaide.

Work has finally begun on installing solar panels to Adelaide airport’s roof, producing the second-largest rooftop solar plant in Australia.

The panels will be attached to the airport’s Terminal roof 1, and will generate 160 megawatt hours of electricity a year, equivalent to the average electricity consumption of 30 houses. Read the full story on the Adelaide Now website.

Although it’s in the UK, I just love this site. Such a great idea and many of the ideas in this online animation are similar to what is being, and can be, done in Australia.

Check out Greenpeace UK’s EfficienCity - an example of how towns and cities across the UK are using cleaner energy to fight climate change.