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Vent: I thought those new smart breakers were just a gimmick until one in a client's house in Austin flagged a failing appliance motor before it caught fire.
It sent an alert to my phone about a weird power draw pattern, and when I got there the next day, the motor windings were already starting to short out, so what other new tech have you guys actually found useful on a job?
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the_holly5mo ago
Felt the same way about smart leak detectors. Wrote them off as overpriced gadgets until I installed a few in a crawl space for a peace-of-mind client. Got a push notification about a slow drip from a pipe joint I never would have found in time. That one alert saved them from a huge mold problem down the road.
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the_abby5mo ago
Guess we're all just paying for fancy warning lights now. My tools just break without sending a text first, which feels rude. Technology is getting better at the "oh crap" part of the job before we even get there.
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anthonykim3mo ago
Have you ever had one of those calls where a little warning saved someone a ton of money? I've seen smart breakers catch an AC unit that was drawing too much power because of a bad capacitor. The homeowner was shocked when I showed them the data from the app. It's not just about the alerts either; some of these things let you monitor the load in real time, which helps you trace a circuit without flipping breakers all day. That alone is worth the setup time for troubleshooting tricky outlets.
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