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Gas Line Repair in Gloucester, MA
With 42% of households on the main and 4% on a tank, Gloucester has no single answer to who owns the pipe. It depends which of the two you are.
Read this first
Gloucester splits between mains and tank gas, at 42% on utility gas and 4% 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 Gloucester is supplied
Mains and tank gas differ in ownership, in who to call, and in how the gas behaves if it escapes — propane is heavier than air and collects low rather than rising.
What they do not differ in is the emergency response, which is the same for both and is the first thing on every page of this site.
| Households in Gloucester | Share |
|---|---|
| Utility (mains) gas | 42% |
| Bottled or tank propane | 4% |
| Electricity | 19% |
| Fuel oil and kerosene | 31% |
| Wood and everything else | 4% |
Source: US Census Bureau, American Community Survey 5-year estimates, table B25040 (house heating fuel), 2023 release. Universe: 13,180 occupied housing units. What B25040 measures is the heating fuel, not the connection. It is the closest published proxy for whether there is a buried service line here, and it is a proxy. 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. Gloucester sits 14 points below 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
PHMSA describes excavation damage as the leading cause of pipeline incidents, and puts the effect of one free phone call plainly: someone who calls 8-1-1 before they dig has a 99 percent chance of avoiding an incident, injury, harm to the environment and even death.
Source: PHMSA, 811 Day.
What to ask whoever quotes it
Ask how much gas work they actually do, not whether they can. Gas is separately licensed in most jurisdictions and plenty of capable plumbers do very little of it.
Other Massachusetts towns we route in
- East Boston 65% mains gas · 3% tank propane
- Melrose 62% mains gas · 2% tank propane
- Haverhill 69% mains gas · 3% tank propane
- Weymouth 44% mains gas · 6% tank propane
- Winchester 58% mains gas · 3% 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. Other Gloucester requests are covered by the same line.
Call (888) 752-8038