Innovator of the Year Profile: Oklahoma City-Based Heartland Homes

Heartland Homes, an innovator in the competitive home building industry, set out to differentiate itself to find a way to make its homes healthier while keeping them affordable for its customers.

The Oklahoma City-based home builder is accomplishing this through a process for installing air purification systems in every home it builds as a standard feature, reducing respiratory problems such as asthma and allergies. The air purification system Heartland Homes uses features an ultraviolet process first introduced more than 60 years ago for medical sterilization. Heartland's air purification system filters out 97 percent of particles found in the air, then neutralizes spores, bacterial agents, pet dander and other allergens with an ultraviolet light. The system has allowed the builder to achieve energy efficiency in all of its homes - cutting energy bills more than 50 percent.

Heartland Homes has been offering them as a standard feature in all of its homes for almost three years. The builder provides these homes ranging in price from $150,000-$500,000.

"There are several air purification systems on the market but most of them were not financially feasible to incorporate as a standard feature," said Dave Osborn, president of Heartland Homes. "I did a lot of research on the process and there were two basic functions that all the systems had in common. First, they removed a significant amount of particles from the air, and secondly, they neutralized, to a great extent, airborne allergens, bacteria, mold spores, and even pet dander. So, we formulated a system utilizing electrostatic filters and a cold cathode ultraviolet light to accomplish a whole house air purification process at an affordable cost. This allowed us to make it standard in all of our homes."

Its efforts have helped Heartland Homes gain a top national ranking in the area of customer satisfaction by ProHome, a third- party warranty administrator.

"As to future plans, we are developing an affordable product that will allow lower-income families the opportunity to have the same benefits of energy efficiency and air quality as our current customers do while maintaining the same high standards of quality building practices that is the foundation of our company," Osborn said.

(c) 2007 Journal Record - Oklahoma City. Provided by ProQuest Information and Learning. All rights Reserved.