Dill’s Plumbing & Heating Ltd
Address: 4602-50 Street, Sedgewick, AB
Ph: 780-384-3535
Email: dillsplumbingandheating@gmail.com
dillsplumbingandheating.com
When the phone rings on a January night and the temperature outside has fallen to -40, Reagan Hogstead already knows what it might mean.
Dylan is probably heading out.
A furnace has stopped. A house is getting cold. Someone needs help.
“Usually when the phone rings in January and it’s -40 outside, my first thought is, he’s leaving again,” Reagan said. “But I know that he’s just doing it to keep somebody warm, so their houses don’t freeze.”
There have been birthdays interrupted by furnace calls and bitter winter days spent repairing heating systems. It comes with the territory when you operate a plumbing and heating company in rural Alberta, where being available can matter just as much as knowing how to solve the problem.
For Dylan and Reagan Hogstead, owners of Dill’s Plumbing & Heating in Sedgewick, that responsibility has become part of the business they are building.
“We value reliability because we want to have a good name in a small community,” Dylan said.
“If somebody is freezing, we want to be the first ones they call.”
That philosophy has helped turn a business Dylan started in his garage in 2020 into a growing company with six employees and a newly constructed shop in Sedgewick.
The new building is an important milestone, but the story behind it began much earlier.
Dylan started plumbing 16 years ago while still in high school, entering the trade through Alberta’s Registered Apprenticeship Program. The experience gave him high school credits, an early start in the trade and, eventually, the foundation to build a business of his own.
After launching Dill’s Plumbing and Heating from his garage, Dylan moved into a rented shop in Sedgewick. As the company grew, the space it needed grew with it.
Now, the business has a shop of its own.
“It was always a dream of mine to build my own shop and have something that’s my own,” Dylan said.
For the Hogsteads, though, the building represents more than additional square footage.
A larger shop means more room to keep parts on hand, helping the company respond to service calls faster. It also creates space for more employees and additional service trucks, opening the door to serving more customers throughout Flagstaff County and beyond.
Dill’s Plumbing & Heating works on residential and commercial projects, including new construction and renovations. Its services include plumbing, furnaces, boilers, water softeners and reverse osmosis systems. The business also coordinates subcontractors for work such as air conditioning and sheet metal.
Much of that work takes place within roughly a two-hour radius of Sedgewick.
As the company expands, Dylan is also investing in the same pathway that gave him his own start.
He has made a point of hiring young people locally and bringing apprentices into the business, giving them an opportunity to learn a trade close to home.
“I’ve had great experience with hiring young youth,” he said. “Just watching them grow. I see them from the start to the finish, and just seeing the knowledge that they can gain, it’s really great to see.”
For Reagan, there is another benefit. Training employees from the beginning gives the company an opportunity to build its expectations around workmanship, reliability and customer service while also creating careers that can keep young people in the region.
“If we hire our youth from the start, then we know that we’re training them in a way that we can trust them to be reliable service people in our community,” she said. “We value investing in our community so that there are future opportunities for businesses here that our youth can provide as well.”
That attention to detail carries into the work itself.
Dylan describes himself simply as “very meticulous.” Employees regularly send him photographs of completed jobs so he can review their work, and he expects projects to meet the same standard he would set if he had completed them himself.
But technical skills are only one part of the service the Hogsteads want customers to experience.
They also want people to feel comfortable asking questions, discussing a project and weighing their options without feeling pressured.
“I want to give them options and tell them what is going to be the best option for whatever situation it involves,” Dylan said. “I just go in with a calm state of mind, and I don’t want anybody to be stressed or feel like they’re pushed into anything.”
That approach is extending into new services as well. Dill’s Plumbing & Heating is preparing to offer reverse osmosis drinking water from its Sedgewick shop in the near future, giving customers another convenient local option for drinking water. Delivery will also be available by request, an option the Hogsteads see as particularly helpful for residents who may have difficulty lifting or transporting large water bottles.
Their investment in the region also extends beyond the walls of the business.
Reagan and Dylan see sponsorship and community involvement as part of maintaining the kind of place where they want to live, work and raise their family. Schools, health care, recreation and community organizations, Reagan said, all contribute to the strength of the region and, in turn, to the businesses operating within it.
“The stronger our community is, the more customers and clients we have,” she said. “We want all these things in our communities. And so, if we can help to support things like that, that means more people living in our area, hopefully moving to our area, and more customers and clients for us. So, everybody wins.”
Standing inside their new shop today, it is easy to measure how far the business has travelled in six years: from a garage to a rented space, to a building designed for its next stage of growth.
For Dylan, the speed of that journey can still be difficult to comprehend.
“I didn’t think I’d be sitting here today, in a new shop,” he said. “It’s just really heartfelt how good this community is.”
For Reagan, the accomplishment is tied just as closely to where they have built it.
“We both love and value small towns,” she said. “The fact that we can build this life together in a small town without having to move to a bigger centre and hopefully raise our family here in a small town forever, means a lot to us.”
And when the next furnace stops on a bitter winter night, the phone will ring again.
Chances are, Dylan will answer.
