ANNOUNCING THE PENINSULA COOL LENDING LIBRARY! Starting Monday, 2/12, you can borrow a variety of items to support your changes in your household energy use! First up, we’re offering digital indoor/outdoor thermometers (with an instructional handout) to help you gauge how efficiently your water heater is working and guide your temperature readjustments, as well as reading materials we think you’ll find helpful. Other cool items just added are Kill A Watt meters. These meters plug into the wall and then you can plug any appliance into the meter and find out how much electricity it is using. This is a great way to show the difference between CFLs and incandescent light bulbs or to see how much electricity a "sleeping" computer really uses. At the bottom of this page is a spreadsheet that you can use with the Kill A Watt meter to record you findings and give you an idea where the energy hogs are in your house. Watch this column for announcements on other cool items you can borrow.

The Lending Library will live in Marion’s classroom, which doubles as Big Kid Childcare in early morning/late afternoon. It is honor-system based, with a sign-in/sign-out sheet, and we hope you’ll make good use of it. Caution: Lending Library tools are really fun for kids!

Copyright Ellen M. Wilkinson 2006-2008. All rights reserved.