Gas Line Repair in Cottekill, NY
Cottekill has a large share of propane: 22% of households use bottled or tank gas against 3% 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 22% of homes in Cottekill 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 Cottekill 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 Cottekill | Share |
|---|---|
| Utility (mains) gas | 3% |
| Bottled or tank propane | 22% |
| Electricity | 8% |
| Fuel oil and kerosene | 62% |
| Wood and everything else | 6% |
Source: US Census Bureau, American Community Survey 5-year estimates, table B25040 (house heating fuel), 2023 release. Universe: 396 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 York as a whole, 61% of households are on mains gas and 3% on tank propane. Cottekill sits 58 points below the state on mains; its propane share carries too wide a margin of error to compare. 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
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 whether the job needs a permit and who is pulling it. Gas work is separately permitted in most jurisdictions and the answer should not be you.
Other New York towns we route in
- Slingerlands 67% mains gas · 4% tank propane
- Parish 1% mains gas · 32% tank propane
- Cato 5% mains gas · 27% tank propane
- Yonkers 56% mains gas · 4% tank propane
- Guilderland 51% mains gas · 2% tank propane
Checking a plumber in New York
New York issues no state plumbing license. New York City licenses Master and Journeyman Plumbers through the Department of Buildings; elsewhere in the state it is your own city, town or county. Start here. Ask the contractor which municipality licenses them and confirm it with that office 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 Cottekill for plumbing that has nothing to do with gas.
Call (888) 752-8038