iPhone meets the LBM industry

Dncxeo wtrH cAPABIllrlcs well beyond mere communications. iPhones are fast becoming powerful tools to help LBM dealers and manufacturers work with, market to, and better serve their customers and prospects. Using specialized applications (or "apps"), iPhones can calculate job lists and lumber dimensions, hold digital product samples, and even locate and provide directions to the nearest home center-thanks to the $0.99 Home lmprovement Store Finder app.

Bear Creek Lumber, Winthrop,

Wa., equipped its entire sales force with iPhones, so reps can respond to customer inquiries more quickly and be constantly connected via email and the Internet. To encourage customers to work with them via iPhone, Bear Creek also developed two of its own apps:

. LumberGalc ($0.99) permits board foot calculations, paneling coverage conversion to board feet (for patterns such as log cabin, tongueand-groove, shiplap), and flooring calculation.

. Board Feet Calculator (free) helps builders, architects and homeowners with calculating board footage and prices from known lumber dimensions. Enter the price per thousand board feet and they'll get board foot price and linear foot price for that particular dimension. (Another company offers a similar app, with the same name, for $0.99.)

Rick's Custom Fencing & Decking, Hillsboro. Or.. devised The Rick's Fence Material Calculator (free), to help customers figure out the materials they'll need for a particular fencing project. They input their preferred fence style, materials and length, and receive a comprehensive list of required materials. Then the list can be forwarded to their local Rick's location for a quick quote.

Other apps provide digital "product samples." before directing consumers to the nearest retail showroom to make their purchase. With Marvin Windows & Doors'Window Shopping (free), homeowners snap a photo of an interior exterior space that could use an upgrade, then arrange new Marvin windows and doors over the photo.

"Once a homeowner creates and saves a design idea, a Marvin dealer can bring the design to life by helping personalize windows or doors with the desired hardware, wood choices, colors, energy-efficiency ratings, and so ron," said Marvin's John Kirchner. "A dealer-locator tool is ]built into the app, which makes it easy to turn a homeownI er's design dream into a reality."

Likewise, Lumber Liquidators' Floor Finder (free) j contains nearly 200 flooring samples. "Lumber Liquidators r wanted to provide another way to make their products easily accessible to their customers," said Marco Pescara. "With the new app, the floor searching and buying process is very convenient and user friendly. By allowing users to access flooring samples right on their handheld screen, there is no need for bulky samples that end up being thrown away, making it also very eco-friendly."

Using Sherwin-Williams' Color-Snap or Benjamin Moore's Color Capture (both free), iPhone users can snap a picture of any color inspiration and instantly match it to the closest hue among the manufacturers' paint offerings.

Palettes Lite (free) and the upgraded Palettes ($S.SS1 can also be used to visualize color schemes for an entire home, inside and out.

Also for designers, l.D. Wood ($2.99) contains over 50 raw cut and unfinished wood samples with species, botanical and colloquial names, origins, descriptions, common uses, and properties for durability, sustainability and woodworking.

Associations are also getting into the act to promote their members' products. Western Wood Products Association's new Lumber DesignEasy JoisURafter Spans application ($O.SS1 allows architects, engineers, building code officials, and other design professionals to quickly calculate simple joist and rafter spans for western lumber structural grades.

Users select the size and loading conditions and generate a table of spans for the structural grades in six different western species groups. Adjustments can be made for load duration, deflection, and incising for pressure treated wood.

Comparing spans for different western species can be done with just a few touches. The app remembers the size and loading conditions selected, so users can choose a new species and then immediately create an updated table of spans.

Similarly, Northeastern Lumber Manufacturers Association recently included several of its top references and marketing tools in NeLMA To Go (free). The app includes "Standard Grading Rules for Northeastern Lumber," "Standard Patterns for Eastern White Pine," the white pine series of Architectural Monographs, and eastern white pine grade and end-use photos.

"Our goal is to continually look for unique ways to make it easy for potential customers to design, specify, and build with Northeastern softwood products," noted NeLMA president Jeff Easterling.

iPhone in the Tool Belt

Once homeowners and contractors decide what products they want, another group of applications can help them figure out how many. Handy-Man Sidekick ($1.99) and Home lmprovement Calculator ($4.99) calculate the amount of material needed for a range of projects, including paint, wallpaper, tile, decking, fencing, concrete, gravel. mulch. brick. and flooring.

Drywall Calculator ($0.0S1 calculates the square footage of any room to determine how many sheets of drywall will be needed.

ConcreteCalc Pro ($O.SS1 analyzes how many cubic yards of concrete are required for a project.

Building-hodudsom iRuler and Ruler ($O.ge each) convert an iPhone's screen to tick marks, for precise measurements in inches or centimeters. iHandy Carpenter ($1.99) features a level, plumb bob, ruler, and protractor.

Advanced construction-math calculators include BuildCalc Pro ($19.99), Carpenter's Helper Pro ($s.ss;, Carpenter's Helper Lite (free).

BalusterPro ($2.001 calculates baluster spacing, while Builder's Formulator ($S.SS1 contains over 200 formulas from electrical , carpentry, plumbing, concrete and financial formulations.

FIS Dimensional Calculator ($9.99) calculates LBM dimensions in feet, inches, and fractions of an inch.

Applications are so versatile that some have replaced actual tools on contractors' tool belts. A-Level, Dual Level, Quad Level ($O.Sg each), and iHandy Level (free) turn an iPhone into a level. Quad Level, in fact, can be used horizontally, vertically or diaganolly-and reports exactly how far out of level something is.

Flashlight and myLite (both free) change the iPhone's screen to bright white, in effect allowing the phone to be used as a flashlight.

Apple's iTunes App Store now offers more than 100,000 different apps for download to iPhones, iPod Touches, and iPads. And it's only the beginning. Every day should bring somethins new.

By Elizabeth Baldwin, Compliance Specialists