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Gas Line Repair in Woonsocket, RI
64% of households in Woonsocket 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
Responsibility changes hands at the meter outlet. The line under the ground between the street and the meter is the utility's up to that point, and the yard line and house piping after it are the property owner's. 64% of homes in Woonsocket heat with utility gas.
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 Woonsocket is supplied
The meter is doing two jobs: measuring gas, and marking where the federally regulated line stops. The second is the one that matters when something fails.
Buried customer piping past the meter — out to a garage, a grill, a generator — is the owner’s, and it is easy to forget it exists until somebody digs.
| Households in Woonsocket | Share |
|---|---|
| Utility (mains) gas | 64% |
| Bottled or tank propane | 4% |
| Electricity | 15% |
| Fuel oil and kerosene | 17% |
| Wood and everything else | 1% |
Source: US Census Bureau, American Community Survey 5-year estimates, table B25040 (house heating fuel), 2023 release. Universe: 17,472 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 Rhode Island as a whole, 56% of households are on mains gas and 4% on tank propane. Woonsocket sits 8 points above the state on mains and about level with 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
Excavation damage remains the leading cause of pipeline incidents according to PHMSA. That is not a fact about pipelines so much as a fact about gardening, and the prevention is one free call to 8-1-1 before the first spade goes in.
Source: PHMSA, 811 Day.
What to ask whoever quotes it
If any part of the job is in the ground, ask when they are calling 8-1-1 and whether a private line may be in the way. Both answers should come before the excavation, not during it.
Other Rhode Island towns we route in
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. Any Woonsocket job, gas or otherwise, is routed from here.
Call (888) 752-8038