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Gas Line Repair in Hickory, NC
Hickory is split: 26% of households are on mains gas and 3% on bottled or tank propane. Those are two different arrangements with two different answers about who owns the pipe.
Read this first
In Hickory, 26% of homes are on mains gas and 3% on bottled, so the town average settles nothing about any one address. Mains gas ends the utility's regulated line at the meter outlet; a tank supply has no such boundary.
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 Hickory is supplied
The split here means a contractor may be quoting on either arrangement, and the first question is which. On mains it also matters which side of the meter the fault is on, because one side may not be a contractor job at all.
| Households in Hickory | Share |
|---|---|
| Utility (mains) gas | 26% |
| Bottled or tank propane | 3% |
| Electricity | 66% |
| Fuel oil and kerosene | 3% |
| Wood and everything else | 3% |
Source: US Census Bureau, American Community Survey 5-year estimates, table B25040 (house heating fuel), 2023 release. Universe: 32,779 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 North Carolina as a whole, 31% of households are on mains gas and 4% on tank propane. Hickory sits 5 points below 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
One free call before any excavation. PHMSA is blunt about why: excavation damage is the leading cause of pipeline incidents, and 8-1-1 raises the odds of avoiding one to 99 in 100. It applies to a fence post as much as a foundation.
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 North Carolina towns we route in
- Franklinville 7% mains gas · 15% tank propane
- Efland 6% mains gas · 18% tank propane
- Benson 6% mains gas · 10% tank propane
- Carrboro 29% mains gas · 1% tank propane
- Fayetteville 20% mains gas · 3% tank propane
Checking a plumber in North Carolina
North Carolina licenses are issued by the North Carolina State Board of Examiners of Plumbing, Heating and Fire Sprinkler Contractors, 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 Hickory calls us about.
Call (888) 752-8038