Gas Line Repair in South Berwick, ME
20% of households in South Berwick heat with bottled or tank propane. On propane there is no utility service line and no meter boundary — the tank, the regulator and the buried run to the house are all the property owner’s.
Read this first
No regulated utility service line is involved where the gas comes out of a tank, and 20% of homes in South Berwick run on propane. The tank and the buried line from it are governed by the supply agreement rather than by a meter boundary, which changes who is responsible for what.
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 South Berwick is supplied
Where a mains customer has a utility on the other side of a meter, a propane customer has a supplier on the other side of a contract. It is a different relationship and it is worth reading once before it matters.
The emergency response is identical either way. Propane is odorized like natural gas, and the instruction is the same: leave, and call 911 from somewhere else.
| Households in South Berwick | Share |
|---|---|
| Utility (mains) gas | 3% |
| Bottled or tank propane | 20% |
| Electricity | 5% |
| Fuel oil and kerosene | 64% |
| Wood and everything else | 8% |
Source: US Census Bureau, American Community Survey 5-year estimates, table B25040 (house heating fuel), 2023 release. Universe: 2,820 occupied housing units. What B25040 measures is the heating fuel, not the connection. It is the closest published proxy for whether there is a buried service line here, and it is a proxy. Service line definition: 49 CFR § 192.3, via PHMSA interpretation PI-12-0003.
Across Maine as a whole, 5% of households are on mains gas and 16% on tank propane. South Berwick 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
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 which side of the meter the work is on before anything else. On the utility side it may not be a contractor job at all, and a quote that has not established that has not established whose problem it is.
Other Maine towns we route in
Checking a plumber in Maine
Maine licenses are issued by the Maine Plumbers' Examining Board, Office of Professional and Occupational Regulation, 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. Non-emergency work in South Berwick goes through this number as well.
Call (888) 752-8038