Gas Line Repair in Oakland, TN
65% of households in Oakland take mains gas. Two things follow: there is a buried line on the property, and somebody other than you is responsible for part of it.
Read this first
A buried service line and a meter sit on most properties in Oakland, where 65% 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 Oakland 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 Oakland | Share |
|---|---|
| Utility (mains) gas | 65% |
| Bottled or tank propane | 4% |
| Electricity | 30% |
| Fuel oil and kerosene | 0% |
| Wood and everything else | 1% |
Source: US Census Bureau, American Community Survey 5-year estimates, table B25040 (house heating fuel), 2023 release. Universe: 4,903 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 Tennessee as a whole, 36% of households are on mains gas and 2% on tank propane. Oakland sits 28 points above the state on mains and about level with it on propane. That is the gap a statewide number papers over, and the reason the figures above are this town’s rather than the state’s.
Before anyone digs on the property
Before any digging — a fence post as much as a foundation — call 8-1-1. It is a nationwide toll-free number, it costs nothing, and PHMSA puts the chance of avoiding an incident afterwards at 99 percent.
Source: PHMSA, 811 Day.
What to ask whoever quotes it
Ask how the work will be tested and what happens at the end of it. An inspection on gas work is normal rather than a complication, and a contractor who treats it as one is telling you something.
Other Tennessee towns we route in
- Christiana 1% mains gas · 2% tank propane
- Cordova 44% mains gas · 2% tank propane
- Spring Hill 46% mains gas · 2% tank propane
- Rockvale 23% mains gas · 3% tank propane
- Dickson 50% mains gas · 2% tank propane
Checking a plumber in Tennessee
Tennessee licenses are issued by the Tennessee Board for Licensing Contractors, Department of Commerce and Insurance, 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 Oakland job, gas or otherwise, is routed from here.
Call (888) 752-8038