Gas Line Repair in Ocean View, DE
24% of households in Ocean View heat with bottled or tank propane. On propane there is no utility service line and no meter boundary — the tank, the regulator and the buried run to the house are all the property owner’s.
Read this first
No regulated utility service line is involved where the gas comes out of a tank, and 24% of homes in Ocean View run on propane. The tank and the buried line from it are governed by the supply agreement rather than by a meter boundary, which changes who is responsible for what.
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 Ocean View is supplied
No meter, no service line, no tariff. On propane the whole installation is one thing and it is yours, from the tank to the appliance.
Which is why the buried section deserves attention here more than it does on a mains connection: nobody else is watching it.
| Households in Ocean View | Share |
|---|---|
| Utility (mains) gas | 28% |
| Bottled or tank propane | 24% |
| Electricity | 44% |
| 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: 3,891 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. Ocean View sits 15 points below the state on mains and 15 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
Before any digging — a fence post as much as a foundation — call 8-1-1. It is a nationwide toll-free number, it costs nothing, and PHMSA puts the chance of avoiding an incident afterwards at 99 percent.
Source: PHMSA, 811 Day.
What to ask whoever quotes it
Ask what they will do about the existing load. Adding an appliance changes what the existing pipe has to deliver, and sizing is a calculation against the whole system rather than the new run alone.
Other Delaware towns we route in
- Bethany Beach 12% mains gas · 11% tank propane
- New Castle 56% mains gas · 1% tank propane
- Greenwood 2% mains gas · 11% tank propane
- Seaford 13% mains gas · 12% tank propane
- Bear 51% mains gas · 6% 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 Ocean View calls us about.
Call (888) 752-8038