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Gas Line Repair in Friday Harbor, WA
Tank propane heats 18% of homes in Friday Harbor. There is no service line here in the federal sense, which sounds like a technicality and is actually the whole difference.
Read this first
18% of households in Friday Harbor use bottled or tank gas, which puts the supply on the property rather than under the street. There is no utility service line and no meter boundary: the tank, the regulator and the line to the house belong to the owner or the gas supplier by 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 Friday Harbor is supplied
A tank, a regulator, and buried line between them and the house. All of it is the property owner’s, and none of it sits under the federal service line definition that governs a mains connection.
That makes the buried run private buried line — which is exactly the sort a standard locate may not mark before somebody digs.
| Households in Friday Harbor | Share |
|---|---|
| Utility (mains) gas | 2% |
| Bottled or tank propane | 18% |
| Electricity | 65% |
| Fuel oil and kerosene | 1% |
| Wood and everything else | 14% |
Source: US Census Bureau, American Community Survey 5-year estimates, table B25040 (house heating fuel), 2023 release. Universe: 4,373 occupied housing units. This is the heating-fuel table. It does not enumerate service lines, and no table does at this geography; what it gives is the best available indication of which arrangement a property is on. Service line definition: 49 CFR § 192.3, via PHMSA interpretation PI-12-0003.
Across Washington as a whole, 39% of households are on mains gas and 2% on tank propane. Friday Harbor sits 37 points below the state on mains and 15 points above 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
A locate before digging is free, and PHMSA is unambiguous about the value — excavation damage is the leading cause of pipeline incidents and calling 8-1-1 first avoids one 99 times in a hundred. The gap to ask about is private buried line, which a standard locate may not mark.
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 Washington towns we route in
- Lake Stevens 44% mains gas · 5% tank propane
- Mount Vernon 45% mains gas · 7% tank propane
- Woodland 13% mains gas · 2% tank propane
- Washougal 34% mains gas · 4% tank propane
- Sumner 39% mains gas · 1% tank propane
Checking a plumber in Washington
Washington licenses are issued by the Washington State Department of Labor and Industries, 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 Friday Harbor calls us about.
Call (888) 752-8038