Gas Line Repair in Dobbs Ferry, NY
Dobbs Ferry is a mains gas town — 73% of households heat with utility gas. The useful thing to know before anything goes wrong is where the utility’s responsibility stops.
Read this first
A buried service line and a meter sit on most properties in Dobbs Ferry, where 73% of homes are on mains gas. Federal rules end the utility's service line at the meter outlet, so everything downstream of the meter is the owner's to maintain and repair.
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 Dobbs Ferry is supplied
Under 49 CFR § 192.3, a service line ends at "the outlet of the customer meter or at the connection to a customer’s piping, whichever is further downstream". Upstream of the meter is the operator’s regulated line. Downstream is customer piping, under local code.
That is where the regulated line stops. Who pays is a separate question set by tariff and state regulation, and it is worth asking your utility rather than assuming.
| Households in Dobbs Ferry | Share |
|---|---|
| Utility (mains) gas | 73% |
| Bottled or tank propane | 2% |
| Electricity | 10% |
| Fuel oil and kerosene | 15% |
| Wood and everything else | under 1% |
Source: US Census Bureau, American Community Survey 5-year estimates, table B25040 (house heating fuel), 2023 release. Universe: 3,853 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 New York as a whole, 61% of households are on mains gas and 3% on tank propane. Dobbs Ferry sits 12 points above the state on mains and 1 point below 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
The single most dangerous thing most people will ever do to a gas line is put a spade through it. PHMSA calls excavation damage the leading cause of pipeline incidents; 8-1-1 is a nationwide toll-free number to call before any excavation, and calling it gives a 99 percent chance of avoiding an incident.
Source: PHMSA, 811 Day.
What to ask whoever quotes it
Ask which side of the meter the work is on before anything else. On the utility side it may not be a contractor job at all, and a quote that has not established that has not established whose problem it is.
Other New York towns we route in
- Sea Cliff 70% mains gas · 5% tank propane
- Old Forge 5% mains gas · 53% tank propane
- Manhasset 69% mains gas · 3% tank propane
- Centereach 51% mains gas · 1% tank propane
- Cropseyville 0% mains gas · 18% 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. Non-emergency work in Dobbs Ferry goes through this number as well.
Call (888) 752-8038