Gas Line Repair and the Half of the Line That Is Yours
Every other plumbing subject is about inconvenience. This one is not, so the emergency instruction comes first on every page here and nothing on this site tells you to work on gas yourself.
Read this first
If you smell gas, leave and call 911 or your utility from outside. Otherwise the two things worth knowing are that the service line legally ends at the outlet of the meter, and that excavation is the leading cause of pipeline incidents.
Source: 49 CFR § 192.3, via PHMSA interpretation PI-12-0003; PHMSA, 811 Day.
If you smell gas
Turn off gas appliances if you can do it on the way out without delay. Leave the area on foot. Do not use a phone or a cell phone, do not cause any flame or spark — light switches included — do not ring doorbells, and do not try to operate any valve. Call 911 from a safe location, then the gas utility.
Do not call us. We are a referral service, not an emergency line. The full list is here and it is the shortest page on the site.
Who owns which part
On mains gas, 49 CFR § 192.3 ends the regulated service line at "the outlet of the customer meter or at the connection to a customer’s piping, whichever is further downstream". So part of the system is the operator’s and part is yours.
On propane there is no service line and no meter boundary — the tank, the regulator and the buried run are all the property owner’s. Who pays is a separate question set by tariff and state regulation, and it is worth asking your utility rather than assuming.
Source: 49 CFR § 192.3, via PHMSA interpretation PI-12-0003.
The biggest risk is a spade
PHMSA describes excavation damage as the leading cause of pipeline incidents, and says someone who calls 8-1-1 before digging has a 99 percent chance of avoiding an incident, injury, harm to the environment and even death. It is nationwide, toll-free and free.
Ask what they will and will not mark: privately owned buried line on your own side of the meter frequently is not covered.
Source: PHMSA, 811 Day.
What this site will not do
Tell you how to check, tighten, test, shut off or relight anything. There is no diagnostic procedure on this site and that is deliberate: the correct response to a suspected leak does not depend on confirming it first, and PHMSA is explicit that you should not attempt to operate pipeline valves yourself.
Where we route
We publish a page for each of the 4,387 towns we route in across 38 states, each with its own split between mains gas and tank propane. Across all of them, 50% of households are on mains and 3% on propane.
For repair work, not for a suspected leak.If you can smell gas, leave and call 911 or your utility from outside; this is the wrong number for that. For everything else — a line, a meter, an appliance connection — we will route you to a contractor covering your area, free of charge to you. Gas work heads this site; other plumbing is handled too.
Call (888) 752-8038