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Gas Line Repair in Pawtucket, RI
Gas arrives by pipe for 68% of homes in Pawtucket. 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
A buried service line and a meter sit on most properties in Pawtucket, where 68% of homes are on mains gas. Federal rules end the utility's service line at the meter outlet, so everything downstream of the meter is the owner's to maintain and repair.
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 Pawtucket 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 Pawtucket | Share |
|---|---|
| Utility (mains) gas | 68% |
| Bottled or tank propane | 5% |
| Electricity | 14% |
| Fuel oil and kerosene | 12% |
| Wood and everything else | 1% |
Source: US Census Bureau, American Community Survey 5-year estimates, table B25040 (house heating fuel), 2023 release. Universe: 31,050 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 Rhode Island as a whole, 56% of households are on mains gas and 4% on tank propane. Pawtucket sits 13 points above the state on mains and about level with it on propane. That spread is what a state average hides, and it is why this page carries the town’s own figures rather than inheriting them.
Before anyone digs on the property
One free call before any excavation. PHMSA is blunt about why: excavation damage is the leading cause of pipeline incidents, and 8-1-1 raises the odds of avoiding one to 99 in 100. It applies to a fence post as much as a foundation.
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 Rhode Island towns we route in
- Westerly 34% mains gas · 6% tank propane
- Cumberland 58% mains gas · 2% tank propane
- Saunderstown 38% mains gas · 12% tank propane
- Carolina 0% mains gas · 0% tank propane
- Greenville 39% mains gas · 2% tank propane
Checking a plumber in Rhode Island
Rhode Island licenses are issued by the Rhode Island Division of Professional Regulation, Department of Labor and Training, 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 Pawtucket goes through this number as well.
Call (888) 752-8038