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Gas Line Repair in Arlington, MA
Gas arrives by pipe for 58% of homes in Arlington. The part of it you can see is the meter; the part that goes wrong most expensively is the part you cannot.
Read this first
Responsibility changes hands at the meter outlet. The line under the ground between the street and the meter is the utility's up to that point, and the yard line and house piping after it are the property owner's. 58% of homes in Arlington heat with utility gas.
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 Arlington is supplied
A buried run from the street to a meter, and piping onward through the property. Federal rules end the service line at the meter outlet; what comes after is customer piping.
The piping people forget they own is the buried run from the meter to a detached garage, a grill or a pool heater. That is theirs, and it may not be marked when somebody comes to locate lines.
| Households in Arlington | Share |
|---|---|
| Utility (mains) gas | 58% |
| Bottled or tank propane | 3% |
| Electricity | 17% |
| Fuel oil and kerosene | 20% |
| Wood and everything else | 2% |
Source: US Census Bureau, American Community Survey 5-year estimates, table B25040 (house heating fuel), 2023 release. Universe: 19,853 occupied housing units. Read it as fuel rather than as plumbing. The share on utility gas is how many houses burn it, which is the nearest thing published to how many have a service line. Service line definition: 49 CFR § 192.3, via PHMSA interpretation PI-12-0003.
Across Massachusetts as a whole, 56% of households are on mains gas and 4% on tank propane. Arlington sits about level with the state on mains and about level with 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
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 Massachusetts towns we route in
- Woburn 51% mains gas · 4% tank propane
- Salem 56% mains gas · 2% tank propane
- Rowley 60% mains gas · 4% tank propane
- Prides Crossing 27% mains gas · 0% tank propane
- Weston 68% mains gas · 1% tank propane
Checking a plumber in Massachusetts
Massachusetts licenses are issued by the Massachusetts Board of State Examiners of Plumbers and Gas Fitters, 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. Any Arlington job, gas or otherwise, is routed from here.
Call (888) 752-8038