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Gas Line Repair in Mattapan, MA
Mattapan is a mains gas town — 62% of households heat with utility gas. The useful thing to know before anything goes wrong is where the utility’s responsibility stops.
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 Mattapan, where 62% 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 Mattapan is supplied
Two questions hide behind one. Where does the regulated line end — the federal answer is the meter outlet. And who pays for a repair on either side of that — which is tariff and state regulation, and varies.
The second one is the one that costs money, and it is answered by your utility rather than by any rule you can look up.
| Households in Mattapan | Share |
|---|---|
| Utility (mains) gas | 62% |
| Bottled or tank propane | 1% |
| Electricity | 23% |
| Fuel oil and kerosene | 11% |
| Wood and everything else | 3% |
Source: US Census Bureau, American Community Survey 5-year estimates, table B25040 (house heating fuel), 2023 release. Universe: 8,862 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. Mattapan sits 6 points above the state on mains and 2 points 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 whether the job needs a permit and who is pulling it. Gas work is separately permitted in most jurisdictions and the answer should not be you.
Other Massachusetts towns we route in
- Dracut 69% mains gas · 3% tank propane
- Wellesley Hills 77% mains gas · 1% tank propane
- Plymouth 38% mains gas · 16% tank propane
- Brookline 58% mains gas · 3% tank propane
- Medway 46% mains gas · 2% 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 Mattapan calls us about.
Call (888) 752-8038