Home › Massachusetts › Belmont
Gas Line Repair in Belmont, MA
In Belmont the mains connection is the norm at 70% of households, with 2% on tank propane. Knowing which you have is the first step and it takes one look at the wall.
Read this first
Responsibility changes hands at the meter outlet. The line under the ground between the street and the meter is the utility's up to that point, and the yard line and house piping after it are the property owner's. 70% of homes in Belmont heat with utility gas.
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 Belmont is supplied
The meter is doing two jobs: measuring gas, and marking where the federally regulated line stops. The second is the one that matters when something fails.
Buried customer piping past the meter — out to a garage, a grill, a generator — is the owner’s, and it is easy to forget it exists until somebody digs.
| Households in Belmont | Share |
|---|---|
| Utility (mains) gas | 70% |
| Bottled or tank propane | 2% |
| Electricity | 10% |
| Fuel oil and kerosene | 18% |
| Wood and everything else | 1% |
Source: US Census Bureau, American Community Survey 5-year estimates, table B25040 (house heating fuel), 2023 release. Universe: 10,336 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 Massachusetts as a whole, 56% of households are on mains gas and 4% on tank propane. Belmont sits 14 points above the state on mains and 2 points below it on propane. The state number would tell you something true about the state and very little about here, which is why it is not the number above.
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 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 Massachusetts towns we route in
- Needham 50% mains gas · 4% tank propane
- Chelmsford 76% mains gas · 2% tank propane
- Hanover 49% mains gas · 2% tank propane
- Chelsea 56% mains gas · 2% tank propane
- North Dighton 37% mains gas · 11% tank propane
Checking a plumber in Massachusetts
Massachusetts licenses are issued by the Massachusetts Board of State Examiners of Plumbers and Gas Fitters, 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. We serve Belmont for plumbing that has nothing to do with gas.
Call (888) 752-8038