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Gas Line Repair in Rowley, MA
In Rowley, 60% 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
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 Rowley, where 60% 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 Rowley is supplied
The meter is doing two jobs: measuring gas, and marking where the federally regulated line stops. The second is the one that matters when something fails.
Buried customer piping past the meter — out to a garage, a grill, a generator — is the owner’s, and it is easy to forget it exists until somebody digs.
| Households in Rowley | Share |
|---|---|
| Utility (mains) gas | 60% |
| Bottled or tank propane | 4% |
| Electricity | 9% |
| Fuel oil and kerosene | 26% |
| Wood and everything else | 2% |
Source: US Census Bureau, American Community Survey 5-year estimates, table B25040 (house heating fuel), 2023 release. Universe: 2,428 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. Rowley sits about level with the state on mains and about level with 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
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
- Bellingham 39% mains gas · 4% tank propane
- Attleboro 35% mains gas · 5% tank propane
- Natick 50% mains gas · 4% tank propane
- Sharon 68% mains gas · 2% tank propane
- Randolph 55% 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. Other Rowley requests are covered by the same line.
Call (888) 752-8038