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Gas Line Repair in Roxbury, MA
In Roxbury, 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 Roxbury, 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 Roxbury 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 Roxbury | Share |
|---|---|
| Utility (mains) gas | 60% |
| Bottled or tank propane | 3% |
| Electricity | 29% |
| 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: 11,764 occupied housing units. B25040 records what heats the house, which is the best available guide to whether a property has mains gas or a tank — it does not count service lines directly. 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. Roxbury sits 4 points above 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
If any part of the job is in the ground, ask when they are calling 8-1-1 and whether a private line may be in the way. Both answers should come before the excavation, not during it.
Other Massachusetts towns we route in
- Sagamore Beach 52% mains gas · 10% tank propane
- Haverhill 69% mains gas · 3% tank propane
- Boxborough 23% mains gas · 3% tank propane
- Lynn 55% mains gas · 3% tank propane
- Lynnfield 54% 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. Any Roxbury job, gas or otherwise, is routed from here.
Call (888) 752-8038