Gas Line Repair in Lewes, DE
In Lewes, 16% of homes run on tank propane rather than mains gas. That changes the answer to almost every question on this page, starting with who owns the pipe.
Read this first
16% of households in Lewes use bottled or tank gas, which puts the supply on the property rather than under the street. There is no utility service line and no meter boundary: the tank, the regulator and the line to the house belong to the owner or the gas supplier by contract.
Source: US Census Bureau, American Community Survey table B25040; the service line boundary is 49 CFR § 192.3.
If you smell gas right now
Leave the building on foot. Do not use a phone or a light switch inside. Call 911 and your gas utility from somewhere else, and do not call us — we are a referral service, not an emergency line. The full list, in order.
How Lewes is supplied
On tank propane there is no service line in the federal sense and no meter boundary. The tank, the regulator and the buried run to the house form one installation, and it belongs to the property owner.
The supplier’s role comes from your contract with them rather than from a tariff, so what they will and will not attend to is a question about that agreement.
| Households in Lewes | Share |
|---|---|
| Utility (mains) gas | 29% |
| Bottled or tank propane | 16% |
| Electricity | 49% |
| Fuel oil and kerosene | 3% |
| Wood and everything else | 2% |
Source: US Census Bureau, American Community Survey 5-year estimates, table B25040 (house heating fuel), 2023 release. Universe: 14,358 occupied housing units. What B25040 measures is the heating fuel, not the connection. It is the closest published proxy for whether there is a buried service line here, and it is a proxy. Service line definition: 49 CFR § 192.3, via PHMSA interpretation PI-12-0003.
Across Delaware as a whole, 42% of households are on mains gas and 9% on tank propane. Lewes sits 13 points below the state on mains and 7 points above it on propane. A state figure would flatten exactly that difference, which is the reason these pages are built town by town instead.
Before anyone digs on the property
The single most dangerous thing most people will ever do to a gas line is put a spade through it. PHMSA calls excavation damage the leading cause of pipeline incidents; 8-1-1 is a nationwide toll-free number to call before any excavation, and calling it gives a 99 percent chance of avoiding an incident.
Source: PHMSA, 811 Day.
What to ask whoever quotes it
Ask which side of the meter the work is on before anything else. On the utility side it may not be a contractor job at all, and a quote that has not established that has not established whose problem it is.
Other Delaware towns we route in
- Clayton 44% mains gas · 13% tank propane
- Port Penn 22% mains gas · 0% tank propane
- Claymont 51% mains gas · 3% tank propane
- Ellendale 1% mains gas · 18% tank propane
- Camden Wyoming 56% mains gas · 7% tank propane
Checking a plumber in Delaware
Delaware licenses are issued by the Delaware Board of Plumbing, Heating, Ventilation, Air Conditioning and Refrigeration Examiners, which publishes a public search you can use before work begins.
Gas work is separately permitted and separately licensed in most jurisdictions, so ask specifically about gas rather than plumbing in general.
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 is one part of what Lewes calls us about.
Call (888) 752-8038