Who shuts the gas off — you or the utility?
The utility, and the split is worth knowing before you need it. Everything up to and including the meter is theirs — they own it, maintain it, repair it, and they turn it off and back on.
Everything past the meter outlet is yours, and that is the side a licensed plumber works on. So when the gas company or the fire department comes out on an odor call, they are making the property safe and working out which side of the meter the problem is on. Their side, they fix it. Your side, they shut the meter and that is where we come in.
How do you find a leak nobody can see?
By narrowing it, not guessing at it. The system gets isolated and put under pressure on a gauge, which tells us whether the house is losing gas and how fast. From there the run gets sectioned off until the loss follows one branch.
Then it is close work: a combustible gas detector swept along the pipe, and soap solution on the joints in that section, which still finds more leaks than anything electronic because a bubble is unambiguous. Buried runs get located from above first, so digging happens where the line actually is.
| What you notice |
What it often means |
Who you call first |
| Rotten-egg smell indoors |
Leak on the house side of the meter |
Gas company or 911, from outside |
| Smell near the meter or at the street |
Utility-side problem |
Gas company — it is theirs to fix |
| Hissing behind an appliance |
Connector or appliance shutoff |
Gas company, then us |
| Dead grass over a buried gas run |
Underground line leaking |
Gas company, then us to locate |
| Pilot keeps going out |
Often not a leak at all |
Us — it is usually the appliance |
How does the gas get turned back on?
Worth knowing before you are standing in the driveway at eleven at night: there is no version of this where one phone call fixes everything.
Once the meter is off and the property is safe, we come in and test the system to find where it is losing. We make the repair, pull the permit for the gas test, and the city inspects it. After it passes, you call the utility and they come turn the gas on. We cannot restore your service and neither can the inspector — only the gas company can, and only after the test is signed off.
Does propane work the same way?
The plumbing side does. We work on propane and LP as well as natural gas, and plenty of property past the city limits runs on a tank rather than a meter.
What changes is who answers the emergency call. With no city utility to shut a meter, the first call goes to your propane supplier and the tank valve is the shutoff. Once the system is off, locating and repairing the leak is the same work, and gas line repair looks the same on either fuel.