Home › Massachusetts › Franklin
Gas Line Repair in Franklin, MA
Gas arrives by pipe for 62% of homes in Franklin. 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. 62% of homes in Franklin 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 Franklin 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 Franklin | Share |
|---|---|
| Utility (mains) gas | 62% |
| Bottled or tank propane | 3% |
| Electricity | 14% |
| Fuel oil and kerosene | 20% |
| Wood and everything else | 1% |
Source: US Census Bureau, American Community Survey 5-year estimates, table B25040 (house heating fuel), 2023 release. Universe: 12,339 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. Franklin sits 6 points above 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
The single most dangerous thing most people will ever do to a gas line is put a spade through it. PHMSA calls excavation damage the leading cause of pipeline incidents; 8-1-1 is a nationwide toll-free number to call before any excavation, and calling it gives a 99 percent chance of avoiding an incident.
Source: PHMSA, 811 Day.
What to ask whoever quotes it
Ask how the work will be tested and what happens at the end of it. An inspection on gas work is normal rather than a complication, and a contractor who treats it as one is telling you something.
Other Massachusetts towns we route in
- Melrose 62% mains gas · 2% tank propane
- North Attleboro 29% mains gas · 3% tank propane
- Westwood 50% mains gas · 7% tank propane
- West Bridgewater 41% mains gas · 11% tank propane
- Wenham 33% mains gas · 14% 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. Other Franklin requests are covered by the same line.
Call (888) 752-8038