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Gas Line Repair in North Kingstown, RI
54% of households in North Kingstown heat with utility gas, which means a buried service line runs from the street to a meter on most of these properties. Where that line ends is a federal definition, and it decides who repairs what.
Read this first
A buried service line and a meter sit on most properties in North Kingstown, where 54% 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 North Kingstown is supplied
The meter is the boundary the federal rules draw: a service line terminates at the meter outlet, or at the connection to customer piping if that is further downstream. Everything past it is customer piping.
Ownership and maintenance responsibility follow tariff and state regulation rather than that definition, and they do not always land in the same place. Ask where your utility’s responsibility ends before you need to know.
| Households in North Kingstown | Share |
|---|---|
| Utility (mains) gas | 54% |
| Bottled or tank propane | 8% |
| Electricity | 13% |
| Fuel oil and kerosene | 24% |
| Wood and everything else | 2% |
Source: US Census Bureau, American Community Survey 5-year estimates, table B25040 (house heating fuel), 2023 release. Universe: 9,872 occupied housing units. B25040 is a fuel count, not an infrastructure count. It tells you what burns in these houses, from which the arrangement follows — but it is an inference, not a meter reading. Service line definition: 49 CFR § 192.3, via PHMSA interpretation PI-12-0003.
Across Rhode Island as a whole, 56% of households are on mains gas and 4% on tank propane. North Kingstown sits about level with the state on mains and about level with it on propane. A state figure would flatten exactly that difference, which is the reason these pages are built town by town instead.
Before anyone digs on the property
Digging is the risk, not age or material. PHMSA names excavation damage as the leading cause of pipeline incidents and puts a caller’s chance of avoiding one at 99 percent. 8-1-1 is nationwide, toll-free, and costs nothing.
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 Rhode Island towns we route in
- East Greenwich 52% mains gas · 2% tank propane
- East Providence 61% mains gas · 4% tank propane
- Bristol 50% mains gas · 6% tank propane
- Lincoln 61% mains gas · 3% tank propane
- Albion 78% mains gas · 0% tank propane
Checking a plumber in Rhode Island
Rhode Island licenses are issued by the Rhode Island Division of Professional Regulation, Department of Labor and Training, 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 North Kingstown requests are covered by the same line.
Call (888) 752-8038