Just six years after its inception, a Smithville company recently made Ingram’s Magazine’s list of the top 10 fastest growing companies in the Kansas City area.

Vanderford and Associates, a company that specializes in the design and installation of ground source heat pumps with offices in Smithville and Buffalo, ranked eighth on the Ingram’s list this year. According to Ingram’s, the company posted a growth rate of nearly 350 percent the last three years and in 2008, with 53 full-time employees, raked in $15 million in revenue.

John Vanderford, chief executive officer of the company and a Smithville resident, said a lot of that success has to do with the need for more energy efficient heating and cooling systems, such as ground source heat pumps, to reduce energy consumption and costs.

“One thing that’s been decided is we need to do things that are green and that really is the right thing to do,” he said. “Over half of the energy spent in this country is spent on heating and cooling buildings which really pushes dependence on foreign oil.”

Ground source heat pumps, Vanderford said, are a solution to that problem. According to Vanderford, installing a heat pump in a building generally cuts annual energy costs about 30 percent when compared to traditional heating and cooling units.

The heat pumps achieve this level of savings by using the temperature of the ground, running pipes filled with water usually about 500 feet below the surface, to make heating and cooling units run more efficiently with warmer water in the winter and cooler water in the summer.

While the heat pumps are more expensive than traditional units, Vanderford said the long-term savings make it a no-brainer.

Though he was skeptical of the technology’s price tag at first, Vanderford became a believer in ground source heat pumps in 1989 while he was a superintendent in Osceola and after he supervised the installation of one in a high school there.

Now, 14 years later, after overseeing the installation of countless more heat pumps in other school districts such as Raytown and Cameron, Vanderford retired from education with 32 years under his belt and started the company to get other school districts to get on board with the technology.

“It’s been kind of fun for me, because it’s really easy selling something you believe in and something you know will save people money,” he said.

Now, Vanderford runs the sales office for the company in Smithville out of the Smithville Area Chamber of Commerce building while the bulk of the company’s regular operations take place at the company’s warehouse in Buffalo.

Though the company is based out of Smithville and Buffalo, Vanderford said they do jobs all over the country, mostly for school districts and other government entities.

To learn more about the company or ground source heat pumps, visit www.vanderfordinc.com.

THE DETAILS

To find out more about ground source heat pumps and Vanderford’s business, visit www.vanderfordinc.com.

Staff writer Michael Westblade can be reached at 389-6636 or This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it .