Committing to the Highest Quality - When Other Homebuilders Don't
December 19, 2024
Ideal Homes & Neighborhoods Commits to the Highest Quality
Building the Best Foundation
The Ideal Homes & Neighborhoods' superior approach to homebuilding is as foundational as you can get – it starts with the dirt. More specifically, it starts by understanding the properties of the specific dirt on which Ideal homes will be built.
When a new Ideal community is identified, civil engineers create hydrology and geotechnical analyses of the water and soil in the area. “Most home builders are not relying on a geotechnical report on their soils, which has always made me scratch my head,” Dr. Chris Ramseyer said. “Ideal Homes & Neighborhoods always has a geotech firm do an actual analysis of what is going on right there so we understand the soil we’re building on.”
Those reports directly influence the foundations of each Ideal home.
Some homebuilders use an International Residential Code (IRC) foundation design which is a generic plan that may fall short of the needs of specific soil types. Instead, Dr. Ramseyer individually designs every foundation for every Ideal floor plan. Each foundation design is customized for the specific soil composition and geotechnical data in each specific Ideal Homes & Neighborhoods community.
This commitment to quality has paid off. Ideal Homes & Neighborhoods foundations far exceed the IRC’s foundation parameters that other builders follow. “Ideal Homes & Neighborhoods foundations have one of the lowest failure rates over time,” said Ramseyer.
This is a deep commitment to quality. By designing every foundation to meet the unique needs of its soil, Ideal ensures stability and durability, giving homeowners confidence that their homes will stand strong for many decades, even in Oklahoma's challenging conditions.
And if that’s not enough, Ideal is one of the only homebuilders in Oklahoma to include a 10-year structural warranty to help fix any issues caused by the shifting Oklahoma soil.
Continuous Improvement
“Ideal Homes & Neighborhoods has spent a lot of time and effort to continually improve. That's a hard process to actually instill into a workforce. A lot of firms talk about continuous improvement, but when I point out a way to improve something with the people at Ideal, it actually happens,” Dr. Ramseyer said.
“We actually have a more extensive internal quality control system than the city provides,” Dr. Ramseyer said. “Internal systems point out any errors during the building process long before they end up being a problem for the homeowner.”
Commitment to Training
Continuing education at Ideal Homes & Neighborhoods has a lot to do with asking and answering the question: Why?
Dr. Ramseyer teaches a class in foundations and framing to Ideal Homes & Neighborhoods builders in the field. “We walk around the site and I point things out so that they know what they're building and why they're building it. Why is the portal frame designed the way it is? Why are we framing certain walls in a certain way? Why are the types of nails and the nail patterns so important?” Dr. Ramseyer said.
“When the builders actually know the reason why we’ve put specific instructions in the engineering specifications, they’re more likely to do the job right.”
While other home builders build to a generic specification, Ideal builds to customized specifications that go above and beyond what others do.
Commitment to Homeowners
When it comes down to it, these building commitments are a commitment to every single Ideal homeowner. “In the end, a home with structural failures is an unsafe home. And we don’t build those,” says Dr. Ramseyer.
Dr. Ramseyer is an internationally recognized structural engineer who gives seminars about concrete to audiences from around the world. He is an emeritus professor at the University of Oklahoma, an authority on tornado-resilient design, and co-designer of the Skydance Bridge, an Oklahoma landmark at OKC’s Scissortail Park.
