Professional and Reliable Service for Over 80 Years

Hanson's Plumbing & Heating Blog

Choosing the Right Water Softener Salt

April 16, 2018

Many homeowners in the US deal with hard water, which makes a water softener an obligation. While selecting water softener salt may appear like a luxury, having hard water or choosing the wrong salt can be more harmful than you think. Your plumbing and appliances are more likely to cause mineral buildup with hard water, […]

Read More

Drain Cleaning 101

February 26, 2018

While we’d all love to say we’re perfect, today’s busy homeowners may often overlook steps to keep their house in order. By Friday, your house could look like the aftermath of a tornado: a sink full of dishes, grimy bathroom, and twenty things out of place. We’ll have to deal with the inevitable clogged drain […]

Read More

Benefits of HVAC Maintenance

January 24, 2018

Do you ever find that there are too many tasks to remember when it comes to your heating and cooling units? Changing your furnace filters is one thing, but how do you know when your furnace is about to break down? How do you know your A/C is working to its best potential? You need […]

Read More

Morning Emotions at the Store

May 12, 2017

He was my first customer this morning.  I can’t say I knew him, but I knew from his accent that he came from the Pelican Rapids area. “Have you got a tank for my pump then?” I try to get to the shop by 7:30 now that I’ve retired instead of before 7 a.m. when […]

Read More

Listening and Sharing Across the Counter

March 16, 2017

He was not a regular customer.  He’d probably stop in only two or three times a year.  I didn’t think that unusual because it was obvious he didn’t have much need to buy anything and I felt he probably had to struggle to make ends meet.  He was retired, lived with his wife in a […]

Read More

Hanson’s Plumbing & Heating Has a New Website!

February 28, 2017

It’s funny to think that our family owned business started back in the 1930’s and today, more than 80 years later, we are announcing the launch of a brand-new website. While our founder Henry “Hardware Hank” Hanson was a successful businessman, this would have knocked his socks off. It’s exciting news! We are a community based, family […]

Read More

The Swede

September 20, 2016

From my early years, I can remember my dad loading my brother and myself into his ’25 Chevrolet and on a Sunday afternoon, driving out east of Pelican Rapids to visit the “newcomers.” My memory tells me they had come from the “old country,” struggling families in little shacks, trying to take root on an […]

Read More

A Life of Singing

September 20, 2016

There was a wood fire going in the basement furnace and another one that had been stoked up in the kitchen range. The floor-to-ceiling register between the downstairs kitchen and the upstairs bedroom, where my brother and I were nestling in, radiated the warmth from the fires below, as well as the music that radiated […]

Read More

Rail Road Memories

September 20, 2016

We had a guy in our town who walked the tracks every day. I’d watch Otto stand on the corner by Fankhanel’s Pool Hall, look at the Model “A” drive by, probably watch Ferdinand Manke pull into town with his team of horses, and then head down the half-block to the Soo Line Depot. Some […]

Read More