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Gas Line Repair in Winston Salem, NC
Winston Salem is split: 31% of households are on mains gas and 2% on bottled or tank propane. Those are two different arrangements with two different answers about who owns the pipe.
Read this first
Winston Salem splits between mains and tank gas, at 31% on utility gas and 2% on bottled. Which one a property has decides where responsibility changes hands: a meter outlet marks the boundary on mains gas, while a tank puts the whole installation on the owner.
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 Winston Salem is supplied
Where both are common, so is the assumption that they work the same way. They do not: on mains, part of the system is somebody else’s responsibility; on propane, none of it is.
| Households in Winston Salem | Share |
|---|---|
| Utility (mains) gas | 31% |
| Bottled or tank propane | 2% |
| Electricity | 61% |
| Fuel oil and kerosene | 5% |
| Wood and everything else | 1% |
Source: US Census Bureau, American Community Survey 5-year estimates, table B25040 (house heating fuel), 2023 release. Universe: 110,551 occupied housing units. This is the heating-fuel table. It does not enumerate service lines, and no table does at this geography; what it gives is the best available indication of which arrangement a property is on. Service line definition: 49 CFR § 192.3, via PHMSA interpretation PI-12-0003.
Across North Carolina as a whole, 31% of households are on mains gas and 4% on tank propane. Winston Salem sits about level with the state on mains and 2 points below it on propane. That distance from the state average is the whole argument for publishing a town figure at all.
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 North Carolina towns we route in
- Vale 5% mains gas · 6% tank propane
- Mooresboro 1% mains gas · 16% tank propane
- Stantonsburg 20% mains gas · 16% tank propane
- Morven 5% mains gas · 13% tank propane
- Mount Holly 42% mains gas · 2% tank propane
Checking a plumber in North Carolina
North Carolina licenses are issued by the North Carolina State Board of Examiners of Plumbing, Heating and Fire Sprinkler Contractors, 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 Winston Salem job, gas or otherwise, is routed from here.
Call (888) 752-8038