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Gas Line Repair in Amherst, NH
Amherst has a large share of propane: 25% of households use bottled or tank gas against 11% on mains. On propane none of the installation belongs to a utility.
Read this first
No regulated utility service line is involved where the gas comes out of a tank, and 25% of homes in Amherst run on propane. The tank and the buried line from it are governed by the supply agreement rather than by a meter boundary, which changes who is responsible for what.
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 Amherst is supplied
Propane changes the ownership question completely. There is no utility that owns a length of it, which means there is nobody else whose problem part of it is.
It also changes the risk in one specific way: propane is heavier than air and collects in low spaces rather than dispersing upward. Basements, pits and crawl spaces are where it goes.
| Households in Amherst | Share |
|---|---|
| Utility (mains) gas | 11% |
| Bottled or tank propane | 25% |
| Electricity | 5% |
| Fuel oil and kerosene | 55% |
| Wood and everything else | 4% |
Source: US Census Bureau, American Community Survey 5-year estimates, table B25040 (house heating fuel), 2023 release. Universe: 4,540 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 New Hampshire as a whole, 25% of households are on mains gas and 17% on tank propane. Amherst sits 14 points below the state on mains and 8 points above it on propane. That is the gap a statewide number papers over, and the reason the figures above are this town’s rather than the state’s.
Before anyone digs on the property
Before any digging — a fence post as much as a foundation — call 8-1-1. It is a nationwide toll-free number, it costs nothing, and PHMSA puts the chance of avoiding an incident afterwards at 99 percent.
Source: PHMSA, 811 Day.
What to ask whoever quotes it
Ask what they will do about the existing load. Adding an appliance changes what the existing pipe has to deliver, and sizing is a calculation against the whole system rather than the new run alone.
Other New Hampshire towns we route in
- Belmont 1% mains gas · 18% tank propane
- Newbury 1% mains gas · 42% tank propane
- West Chesterfield 3% mains gas · 5% tank propane
- Lee 0% mains gas · 27% tank propane
- Sullivan 1% mains gas · 9% tank propane
Checking a plumber in New Hampshire
The authority is the New Hampshire Office of Professional Licensure and Certification, Mechanical Safety and Licensing Board. New Hampshire licenses plumbers but publishes no online licensee search, so verification means contacting the office directly.
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. Non-emergency work in Amherst goes through this number as well.
Call (888) 752-8038