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Gas Line Repair in Brookline, MA
In Brookline, 58% of homes are on mains gas. Every one of them has a service line under the ground between the street and the meter, and part of it belongs to somebody else.
Read this first
A buried service line and a meter sit on most properties in Brookline, where 58% of homes are on mains gas. Federal rules end the utility's service line at the meter outlet, so everything downstream of the meter is the owner's to maintain and repair.
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 Brookline is supplied
On a mains connection there are two systems, not one, and the meter divides them. The federal definition puts the end of the regulated service line at the meter outlet; local code governs everything beyond it.
Practically, that means part of the problem may not be yours at all — and part of it certainly is.
| Households in Brookline | Share |
|---|---|
| Utility (mains) gas | 58% |
| Bottled or tank propane | 3% |
| Electricity | 27% |
| Fuel oil and kerosene | 10% |
| Wood and everything else | 2% |
Source: US Census Bureau, American Community Survey 5-year estimates, table B25040 (house heating fuel), 2023 release. Universe: 24,020 occupied housing units. B25040 is a fuel count, not an infrastructure count. It tells you what burns in these houses, from which the arrangement follows — but it is an inference, not a meter reading. 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. Brookline sits about level with the state on mains and about level with it on propane. That distance from the state average is the whole argument for publishing a town figure at all.
Before anyone digs on the property
Digging is the risk, not age or material. PHMSA names excavation damage as the leading cause of pipeline incidents and puts a caller’s chance of avoiding one at 99 percent. 8-1-1 is nationwide, toll-free, and costs nothing.
Source: PHMSA, 811 Day.
What to ask whoever quotes it
Ask what is being left behind: where the new pipe runs, at what depth, and whether you will get a photograph of the trench before it is filled. That record will not exist anywhere else and you will want it eventually.
Other Massachusetts towns we route in
- Groveland 62% mains gas · 3% tank propane
- Attleboro Falls 13% mains gas · 2% tank propane
- Hanover 49% mains gas · 2% tank propane
- North Andover 59% mains gas · 4% tank propane
- Scituate 59% mains gas · 3% 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. Non-emergency work in Brookline goes through this number as well.
Call (888) 752-8038