Gas Line Repair in Melba, ID
Only 9% of households in Melba use gas of any kind — under 1% on mains and 9% on tank propane. Gas line work is the exception here rather than the rule.
Read this first
Only 9% of homes in Melba use gas for heat. That makes a gas line the exception rather than the rule, and the ones that exist are usually tank supplies owned on the property instead of utility service lines ending at a meter.
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 Melba is supplied
Most properties here have no service line and no meter. For the minority that do, everything on this site applies exactly as it does in a gas town.
| Households in Melba | Share |
|---|---|
| Utility (mains) gas | under 1% |
| Bottled or tank propane | 9% |
| Electricity | 65% |
| Fuel oil and kerosene | 7% |
| Wood and everything else | 19% |
Source: US Census Bureau, American Community Survey 5-year estimates, table B25040 (house heating fuel), 2023 release. Universe: 1,280 occupied housing units. This is the heating-fuel table. It does not enumerate service lines, and no table does at this geography; what it gives is the best available indication of which arrangement a property is on. Service line definition: 49 CFR § 192.3, via PHMSA interpretation PI-12-0003.
Across Idaho as a whole, 62% of households are on mains gas and 3% on tank propane. Melba sits 61 points below the state on mains and 5 points above it on propane. That is the gap a statewide number papers over, and the reason the figures above are this town’s rather than the state’s.
Before anyone digs on the property
PHMSA describes excavation damage as the leading cause of pipeline incidents, and puts the effect of one free phone call plainly: someone who calls 8-1-1 before they dig has a 99 percent chance of avoiding an incident, injury, harm to the environment and even death.
Source: PHMSA, 811 Day.
What to ask whoever quotes it
Ask them to describe the fault before they price it. "The line needs replacing" is not a diagnosis, and on a buried run the difference between one damaged point and a line at the end of its life is most of the cost.
Other Idaho towns we route in
Checking a plumber in Idaho
Idaho licenses are issued by the Idaho State Plumbing Board, Division of Occupational and Professional Licenses, 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. Other Melba requests are covered by the same line.
Call (888) 752-8038