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Gas Line Repair in Long Island City, NY
Gas arrives by pipe for 54% of homes in Long Island City. The part of it you can see is the meter; the part that goes wrong most expensively is the part you cannot.
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 Long Island City, where 54% 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 Long Island City is supplied
Under 49 CFR § 192.3, a service line ends at "the outlet of the customer meter or at the connection to a customer’s piping, whichever is further downstream". Upstream of the meter is the operator’s regulated line. Downstream is customer piping, under local code.
That is where the regulated line stops. Who pays is a separate question set by tariff and state regulation, and it is worth asking your utility rather than assuming.
| Households in Long Island City | Share |
|---|---|
| Utility (mains) gas | 54% |
| Bottled or tank propane | 1% |
| Electricity | 34% |
| Fuel oil and kerosene | 6% |
| Wood and everything else | 4% |
Source: US Census Bureau, American Community Survey 5-year estimates, table B25040 (house heating fuel), 2023 release. Universe: 22,687 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 New York as a whole, 61% of households are on mains gas and 3% on tank propane. Long Island City sits 7 points below 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
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 whether the job needs a permit and who is pulling it. Gas work is separately permitted in most jurisdictions and the answer should not be you.
Other New York towns we route in
- Remsen 4% mains gas · 16% tank propane
- Hewlett 72% mains gas · 0% tank propane
- Richland 0% mains gas · 41% tank propane
- Stony Brook 37% mains gas · 1% tank propane
- Madison 7% mains gas · 19% tank propane
Checking a plumber in New York
New York issues no state plumbing license. New York City licenses Master and Journeyman Plumbers through the Department of Buildings; elsewhere in the state it is your own city, town or county. Start here. Ask the contractor which municipality licenses them and confirm it with that office 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 Long Island City requests are covered by the same line.
Call (888) 752-8038