Home › Virginia › Martinsville
Gas Line Repair in Martinsville, VA
In Martinsville, 20% of homes use gas — 17% of it piped and 3% from a tank. A meter is a regulatory boundary; a propane tank is not one.
Read this first
Martinsville splits between mains and tank gas, at 17% on utility gas and 3% 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 Martinsville is supplied
Two arrangements in one town, and the difference is not cosmetic. A mains connection has a meter, and 49 CFR § 192.3 ends the regulated service line at its outlet. A propane installation has no meter boundary and belongs to the property owner end to end.
Establish which you have before anything else on this page applies.
| Households in Martinsville | Share |
|---|---|
| Utility (mains) gas | 17% |
| Bottled or tank propane | 3% |
| Electricity | 69% |
| Fuel oil and kerosene | 9% |
| Wood and everything else | 2% |
Source: US Census Bureau, American Community Survey 5-year estimates, table B25040 (house heating fuel), 2023 release. Universe: 12,849 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 Virginia as a whole, 45% of households are on mains gas and 3% on tank propane. Martinsville sits 29 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
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 them to describe the fault before they price it. "The line needs replacing" is not a diagnosis, and on a buried run the difference between one damaged point and a line at the end of its life is most of the cost.
Other Virginia towns we route in
- Check 5% mains gas · 7% tank propane
- Patrick Springs 1% mains gas · 5% tank propane
- Chatham 6% mains gas · 12% tank propane
- Bluemont 3% mains gas · 18% tank propane
- Chantilly 72% mains gas · 2% tank propane
Checking a plumber in Virginia
Virginia licenses are issued by the Virginia Department of Professional and Occupational Regulation, 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. Gas is one part of what Martinsville calls us about.
Call (888) 752-8038