Gas Line Repair in Center, KY
Center runs on both: 41% mains gas, 8% tank propane, 49% on gas of some kind. The two arrangements answer the ownership question completely differently.
Read this first
Mains gas heats 41% of homes in Center and tank gas another 8%. The difference matters more than the fault does at first, because only one of the two has a meter outlet where the utility's responsibility stops.
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 Center is supplied
Where both are common, so is the assumption that they work the same way. They do not: on mains, part of the system is somebody else’s responsibility; on propane, none of it is.
| Households in Center | Share |
|---|---|
| Utility (mains) gas | 41% |
| Bottled or tank propane | 8% |
| Electricity | 39% |
| Fuel oil and kerosene | 0% |
| Wood and everything else | 12% |
Source: US Census Bureau, American Community Survey 5-year estimates, table B25040 (house heating fuel), 2023 release. Universe: 267 occupied housing units. The table counts heating fuel rather than pipework. A house on mains gas almost certainly has a service line; the Census does not say so directly and neither do we. Service line definition: 49 CFR § 192.3, via PHMSA interpretation PI-12-0003.
Across Kentucky as a whole, 37% of households are on mains gas and 5% on tank propane. Center sits about level with the state on propane; its mains share carries too wide a margin of error to compare. That distance from the state average is the whole argument for publishing a town figure at all.
Before anyone digs on the property
A locate before digging is free, and PHMSA is unambiguous about the value — excavation damage is the leading cause of pipeline incidents and calling 8-1-1 first avoids one 99 times in a hundred. The gap to ask about is private buried line, which a standard locate may not mark.
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 Kentucky towns we route in
- Jenkins 8% mains gas · 9% tank propane
- Prestonsburg 38% mains gas · 1% tank propane
- New Castle 32% mains gas · 9% tank propane
- Liberty 9% mains gas · 6% tank propane
- West Van Lear 0% mains gas · 0% tank propane
Checking a plumber in Kentucky
Kentucky licenses are issued by the Kentucky Department of Housing, Buildings and Construction, Division of Plumbing, 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 Center calls us about.
Call (888) 752-8038