The Dewalt Mobile Pro App – Make that iPhone Work For A Living!

I recently got an email from Dewalt announcing their new cordless framing nailer (a review of which is coming soon!). At the end of the email was a link to a free download of their Dewalt Mobile Pro App; I’d seen the link before, but didn’t have an iPhone at the time. (The app is currently available only for the iPhone, iPad, and iPod Touch.) Since FREE fits my budget, and I’m always looking for ways to save time and work smarter, I downloaded it and put it to the test.

The DEWALT Mobile Pro App was designed for construction professionals, and comes with a decent variety of useful, free calculators. There’s a basic math calculator, with options to use it to solve equations that are way beyond MY abilities – and needs. For example, you can solve for sine, cosine, tangents, and other strange and scary mathematical outcomes. Those abilities are probably useful to someone in some trade, but they just give me scary flashbacks back to ninth-grade math class. Thankfully, though, there are a lot of other options that are much more likely to be helpful.

One of the features of the Dewalt Mobile App lets you convert one type of measurement into another. Ever had the urge to convert microns into fathoms, or rods into chains? Neither have I; not even on a really slow day. Those are just some of the available units, though, and many of the others are a bit more useful, like inches to centimeters or feet to meters.

The area conversions are likely to be useful, too, for example square feet into square yards. The Dewalt Mobile App also lets you figure the areas of oddball shapes like circles, triangles, ellipses, polygons, and trapezoids, as well as more common shapes like squares and rectangles, by specifying dimensions.

Another calculator I think is very handy is the concrete slab estimator. Type in the dimensions of the slab, the depth of the concrete in inches, and the approximate percentage of waste, or as I call it, insurance. (Estimate low when you’re pouring foundation walls sometime, and you’ll see what I mean). The Dewalt Mobile Pro App will let you know how many cubic yards of concrete to order. You could also use this to figure how much to order for a footer.

The Dewalt Mobile Pro App – Helping Out Indoors

Getting ready to lay out some walls? The Dewalt Mobile Pro App lets you specify the spacing (e.g. 16” or 24” on center), the number of openings for windows and doors, how many corners, and the number of intersecting walls. The result? How many straight studs you have to try to find.

Got your walls all built, and some drywall to hang? Input the lineal feet of your walls, your ceiling height, the size of the drywall sheets you’re using (e.g. 4’ X 12’), and the approximate amount of waste. The Dewalt Mobile App will calculate the number of sheets of drywall, how many feet of tape, and how many pounds of drywall compound you’ll need. It also calculates how many pounds of nails, and how many screws, it would take to do the job, so you can choose the fastener you prefer (or code requires).

Drywall all up, and ready to paint? There’s an app for that! Input the room dimensions, type of surface (rough or smooth), size of doors and windows, the height of the trim, and how many coats you’ll be putting on. Your results will include gallons of paint needed for walls, ceiling and trim.

Dewalt Mobile Pro App Add-Ons

Want more? The Dewalt Mobile Pro App also offers the option to add more trade-specific packages to the mix. The $4.99 Carpentry package, for example, has a baluster-spacing calculator; that would have come in VERY handy a few weeks ago, when I was adding a couple of porch railings. It also has several calculators useful to deck builders: deck load, posts, and footing sizes, among others. There are also calculators for roof gable, hip, valley, underlayment and shingles, and some trim-related calculators, among others.

If you’re into the heavy stuff, the $4.99 Concrete pack can estimate the amount of concrete needed for a variety of projects, including columns, slabs, footings and case filling. It can also calculate slump, water/cement ratio, the quantities of block or brick needed for masonry and foundation work, and the number of bags of concrete needed for a project, along with other grey-area stuff.

The $.99 Landscaping pack helps you figure the necessary quantities of lots of outdoorsy materials, including fertilizer and seed, pavers, plants, stone and gravel, brick and block for walls, and mulch. Some of its other features include plant spacing and tree height calculators. The Dewalt Mobile Pro App includes a good tutorial, with most sections offering examples of how to use the various available entries.

If your nickname is Sparky, you may want to invest $4.99 for the Electrical pack. You’ll get calculations for box fill, conductor size, voltage drops, burial depths, conduit bends, and overcurrent protection, along with many other electrifying calculations.

The Dewalt Mobile Pro App has several other packs available, including one for Business, Construction Math, Finish Materials, Site Work, and Trim Carpentry. If you’re a general contractor, or just a know-it-all, you can get the Master Pack, that includes everything, for $19.99.

There’s also a page with links to several eBooks, including code manuals for plumbing, electrical, building and HVAC, and reference books on safety, LEED standards and green building, among many others, that you can download for a fee. There are also links to Dewalt resources, including FAQs and online parts and documentation. Get the Dewalt Mobile Pro App free for your iPhone, iPad or iPod Touch here, and get calculating!