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Gas Line Repair in Boston, MA
Boston is a town of two systems. 40% take mains gas and 2% use propane, and only one of those arrangements has a utility on the other side of it.
Read this first
Mains gas heats 40% of homes in Boston and tank gas another 2%. 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 Boston 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 Boston | Share |
|---|---|
| Utility (mains) gas | 40% |
| Bottled or tank propane | 2% |
| Electricity | 51% |
| Fuel oil and kerosene | 5% |
| Wood and everything else | 3% |
Source: US Census Bureau, American Community Survey 5-year estimates, table B25040 (house heating fuel), 2023 release. Universe: 70,349 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 Massachusetts as a whole, 56% of households are on mains gas and 4% on tank propane. Boston sits 16 points below the state on mains and 2 points below it on propane. The state number would tell you something true about the state and very little about here, which is why it is not the number above.
Before anyone digs on the property
8-1-1 is free and nationwide, and PHMSA gives callers a 99 percent chance of avoiding an incident, injury or worse. Ask them what they will and will not mark: privately owned buried lines on your own side of the meter frequently are not covered.
Source: PHMSA, 811 Day.
What to ask whoever quotes it
If any part of the job is in the ground, ask when they are calling 8-1-1 and whether a private line may be in the way. Both answers should come before the excavation, not during it.
Other Massachusetts towns we route in
- Medford 63% mains gas · 2% tank propane
- West Newton 74% mains gas · 4% tank propane
- Weston 68% mains gas · 1% tank propane
- Norton 53% mains gas · 4% tank propane
- Bridgewater 39% mains gas · 5% 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. Gas is one part of what Boston calls us about.
Call (888) 752-8038