ElectricalBossPro Blog — Electrician App

Using the Electrician App From Attics, Crawlspaces and With Gloves On

Electricians do a lot of their work in places phones were not designed for. Hot attics with blown-in insulation. Crawlspaces where you are lying on a vapor barrier. Unfinished basements with one bulb. And a lot of it happens with gloves on. A tech app that only works when you are standing comfortably in a driveway is not going to get much use.

The App Is for the Edges of the Job

Who logs in and who rides along is covered in Apprentices and Helpers in the Electrician App: Who Logs In and Who Rides Along. This guide is about the physical side: using the phone where electricians actually work.

The good news is that the ElectricalBossPro tech app is mostly used at the edges of a job, not in the middle of it. You read the card before you go in. You tap Start at the door. You take a photo, fill in the checklist and tap Complete when you come back out. Very little of it needs to happen while you are wedged between joists.

Read the Card Before You Go Up or Under

The single most useful habit is reading the job card before climbing into the attic or crawling under the house. Everything you need is there:

• Access notes. “Attic access in the hallway closet ceiling” or “Crawlspace hatch on the east side, tight entry.”
• Equipment. What is saved on the house, where it is and what it is rated.
• Past notes. What the last tech found up there.
• The customer's description. Which room, which fixture, which circuit they were complaining about.

Read it once on the ground, then put the phone away. Climbing back down to check something you could have read first is wasted time.

Find a Good Spot to Tap

When you do need the phone, find a stable place to use it. The attic hatch, the top of the ladder with both feet set, the crawlspace entrance, the basement stairs, the truck tailgate. Somewhere you can see the screen clearly and do not have to hold the phone at an odd angle.

Most of what the app needs can wait until you are back in one of those spots. Notes, the checklist, readings and the condition can all be entered once you are out of the tight space. Write down a reading on your hand or a scrap of tape if you need to, and enter it as soon as you are somewhere comfortable.

Working With Gloves On

Taking gloves off and on twenty times a day gets old. A few things help:

• Touchscreen-friendly work gloves. Some general-purpose work gloves have touchscreen fingertips. Which gloves are right for which task is your shop's call; this is only about tapping a phone between tasks.
• A stylus in the van. A cheap capacitive stylus on a lanyard lets a gloved tech tap buttons without fumbling.
• Big targets. Start, Skip and Complete are big, simple buttons. Navigation is one tap. Most of the routine taps are easy even with thick fingers.
• Batch the typing. Save longer notes for when gloves come off at the end of the call.

Phone dictation helps too. Most phones let you speak into any text box, which is often faster than typing with clean hands, let alone gloved ones.

Photos in Dark, Tight Spaces

Attics, crawlspaces and basements are dark, and photos taken there tend to come out as black rectangles. Use a work light or the phone's flashlight, hold still for a second before tapping, and take one wide shot to show where you are and one close shot of the detail. Before-and-after photos are covered in Before-and-After Photos From the Electrical Tech's Phone.

If it is not practical to take the phone into a space, take the photo from the hatch or entrance, or skip it and note why. A missing photo is better than a dropped phone in a crawlspace.

Protect the Phone

Phones and job sites do not always get along. A sturdy case, a screen protector and a phone pocket or holster that keeps the phone out of the way go a long way. Keep a charger in the van; a long day of calls with navigation, photos and crew GPS will drain a battery. And keep the phone out of the work area itself. It belongs in a pocket or set aside, not balanced somewhere it can fall.

Weak signal is common in basements and crawlspaces too. That gets its own guide next in this series.

Short Taps, Long Days

The point of a tech app is to take a few seconds at the right moments, not to make anyone stare at a screen in a hot attic. Read the card before you go in, tap Start at the door, enter what you found when you come out, and tap Complete. To see what the app puts in front of your techs, visit the ElectricalBossPro electrician app page.