Gas Line Repair in Pilot, VA
Pilot is largely a town without gas: 1% of households use it at all. That makes the buried service line a minority arrangement, and the people who have one worth talking to specifically.
Read this first
Only 1% of homes in Pilot use gas for heat. That makes a gas line the exception rather than the rule, and the ones that exist are usually tank supplies owned on the property instead of utility service lines ending at a meter.
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 Pilot is supplied
Where most homes are electric, gas work is a specialty and less common, and the properties that do have gas are often the older or the larger ones.
The rules do not change with the local share. If there is a mains connection there is a service line ending at the meter outlet under 49 CFR § 192.3, and if there is a tank the whole installation is the owner’s.
| Households in Pilot | Share |
|---|---|
| Utility (mains) gas | 0% |
| Bottled or tank propane | 1% |
| Electricity | 83% |
| Fuel oil and kerosene | 0% |
| Wood and everything else | 16% |
Source: US Census Bureau, American Community Survey 5-year estimates, table B25040 (house heating fuel), 2023 release. Universe: 483 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 Virginia as a whole, 45% of households are on mains gas and 3% on tank propane. Pilot sits 45 points below the state on mains and 2 points 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
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
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 Virginia towns we route in
- Henry 0% mains gas · 7% tank propane
- Falls Church 55% mains gas · 2% tank propane
- McLean 56% mains gas · 2% tank propane
- Lovettsville 2% mains gas · 45% tank propane
- Strasburg 10% mains gas · 6% tank propane
Checking a plumber in Virginia
Virginia licenses are issued by the Virginia Department of Professional and Occupational Regulation, 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. Gas is one part of what Pilot calls us about.
Call (888) 752-8038