Gas Line Repair in Lanham, MD
Most of Lanham is on the gas main: 56% 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 Lanham, where 56% 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 Lanham is supplied
Everything upstream of the meter outlet is the operator’s service line under 49 CFR § 192.3. Everything after it is customer piping under local code. That single point is what a contractor establishes before quoting.
It is also why the answer to "is this my problem" is sometimes no, and why it is worth asking before assuming it is yes.
| Households in Lanham | Share |
|---|---|
| Utility (mains) gas | 56% |
| Bottled or tank propane | 1% |
| Electricity | 37% |
| Fuel oil and kerosene | 4% |
| Wood and everything else | 2% |
Source: US Census Bureau, American Community Survey 5-year estimates, table B25040 (house heating fuel), 2023 release. Universe: 13,230 occupied housing units. Read it as fuel rather than as plumbing. The share on utility gas is how many houses burn it, which is the nearest thing published to how many have a service line. Service line definition: 49 CFR § 192.3, via PHMSA interpretation PI-12-0003.
Across Maryland as a whole, 45% of households are on mains gas and 3% on tank propane. Lanham sits 11 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 how much gas work they actually do, not whether they can. Gas is separately licensed in most jurisdictions and plenty of capable plumbers do very little of it.
Other Maryland towns we route in
- New Windsor 2% mains gas · 5% tank propane
- Centreville 2% mains gas · 26% tank propane
- Worton 3% mains gas · 18% tank propane
- Woodstock 52% mains gas · 8% tank propane
- Cabin John 30% mains gas · 9% tank propane
Checking a plumber in Maryland
Maryland licenses are issued by the Maryland State Board of Plumbing, Department of Labor, 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 Lanham requests are covered by the same line.
Call (888) 752-8038