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Gas Line Repair in Cambridge, MA
Most of Cambridge is on the gas main: 63% of households. That means a meter on the wall and a service line under the ground, and a boundary between them that federal rules put in a specific place.
Read this first
The utility's regulated line ends at the meter outlet and the piping beyond it belongs to the property owner. That boundary decides most gas line questions in Cambridge, where 63% of households heat with utility gas and a buried service line runs from the street on most properties.
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 Cambridge 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 Cambridge | Share |
|---|---|
| Utility (mains) gas | 63% |
| Bottled or tank propane | 2% |
| Electricity | 28% |
| Fuel oil and kerosene | 4% |
| Wood and everything else | 3% |
Source: US Census Bureau, American Community Survey 5-year estimates, table B25040 (house heating fuel), 2023 release. Universe: 49,732 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 Massachusetts as a whole, 56% of households are on mains gas and 4% on tank propane. Cambridge sits 7 points above the state on mains and 1 point below 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
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 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
- East Walpole 62% mains gas · 2% tank propane
- Hanscom AFB 54% mains gas · 0% tank propane
- Randolph 55% mains gas · 3% tank propane
- Hyde Park 70% mains gas · 1% tank propane
- North Reading 47% 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. Any Cambridge job, gas or otherwise, is routed from here.
Call (888) 752-8038