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Gas Line Repair in Contoocook, NH
21% of households in Contoocook 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
Tank gas serves 21% of households in Contoocook. With no utility main and no meter, the boundary that matters on mains gas does not exist here, and the tank, regulator and buried line are the owner's or the supplier's under contract.
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 Contoocook is supplied
Propane changes the ownership question completely. There is no utility that owns a length of it, which means there is nobody else whose problem part of it is.
It also changes the risk in one specific way: propane is heavier than air and collects in low spaces rather than dispersing upward. Basements, pits and crawl spaces are where it goes.
| Households in Contoocook | Share |
|---|---|
| Utility (mains) gas | under 1% |
| Bottled or tank propane | 21% |
| Electricity | 4% |
| Fuel oil and kerosene | 59% |
| Wood and everything else | 15% |
Source: US Census Bureau, American Community Survey 5-year estimates, table B25040 (house heating fuel), 2023 release. Universe: 2,112 occupied housing units. The table counts heating fuel rather than pipework. A house on mains gas almost certainly has a service line; the Census does not say so directly and neither do we. Service line definition: 49 CFR § 192.3, via PHMSA interpretation PI-12-0003.
Across New Hampshire as a whole, 25% of households are on mains gas and 17% on tank propane. Contoocook sits 25 points below the state on mains and about level with 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
Excavation damage remains the leading cause of pipeline incidents according to PHMSA. That is not a fact about pipelines so much as a fact about gardening, and the prevention is one free call to 8-1-1 before the first spade goes in.
Source: PHMSA, 811 Day.
What to ask whoever quotes it
Ask what is being left behind: where the new pipe runs, at what depth, and whether you will get a photograph of the trench before it is filled. That record will not exist anywhere else and you will want it eventually.
Other New Hampshire towns we route in
- Hampton Falls 6% mains gas · 19% tank propane
- Newfields 2% mains gas · 19% tank propane
- New Boston 4% mains gas · 37% tank propane
- Greenland 10% mains gas · 30% tank propane
- East Kingston 2% mains gas · 28% tank propane
Checking a plumber in New Hampshire
The authority is the New Hampshire Office of Professional Licensure and Certification, Mechanical Safety and Licensing Board. New Hampshire licenses plumbers but publishes no online licensee search, so verification means contacting the office directly.
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 Contoocook goes through this number as well.
Call (888) 752-8038