If you smell gas in a Gaffney home, leave first and call from outside. Natural gas in Gaffney comes from Piedmont Natural Gas, and Piedmont's 24-hour emergency number is 800-752-7504. Calling 911 works too. The Board of Public Works is not the gas company here, so a call to the BPW will not get a gas crew rolling.
Piedmont's technician will check the house, shut off the gas where needed and repair anything on Piedmont's side. If the leak is in your piping or an appliance, expect a red tag and an instruction to have a licensed contractor make the repair.
That is where we come in. We answer around the clock, find every leak on the customer side of the meter, replace what failed, pressure-test the repair and relight your appliances. Gaffney is a short run up I-85 from our base in Spartanburg.
Homes north of the Broad River are served by the York County Natural Gas Authority instead, and rural homes may be on propane. The first call changes; the repair process on your side of the meter does not.
Where leaks hide in older Gaffney homes
In the historic district and the older streets around it, much of the gas piping went in long after the houses were built, often in steel through the crawlspace. Decades later, the weak spots are the joints and fittings rather than the straight runs.
- Threaded joints that have been opened and remade through several furnace and water heater swaps
- Old plug valves at abandoned fireplace or space heater stubs
- Steel pipe touching soil or damp masonry in the crawlspace
- Older flexible connectors behind ranges and dryers
- Unions and regulators near the meter on the house side
Large houses take a methodical search
In a big house with long runs, a gas smell in one room may come from a leak some distance away, carried along a wall cavity or up from the crawlspace. Chasing the smell wastes time.
We isolate the system section by section, pressure each one and watch the gauge. A section that loses pressure contains a leak, and from there an electronic detector and bubble solution pin it to a single fitting. That way we open a wall only where the leak actually is.
After the red tag
The tag Piedmont leaves describes the condition its technician found. Send us a photo when you call. We repair that condition, then test the rest of the system, because gas should not come back on to a second leak the tag did not mention.
If the meter was locked, Piedmont removes the lock after the repair is made and tested. We tell you what to report when you call them, and we come back to relight every appliance once the gas is on.
In a house with a furnace, a water heater, a range and logs, relighting is real work. Each pilot is lit, each burner is run and each connection is checked while gas flows, so the house is back to normal when we leave.
Buried lines past the meter
When the smell is outdoors, the suspect may be a customer-owned line buried in the yard, running to a garage, shop, grill or pool heater. SC811 marks Piedmont's lines up to the meter and stops there, so a private line has to be traced another way before anyone digs.
Surface readings along the route show where gas is coming up, and that is where we dig. An old steel yard line with one hole usually has more on the way, and replacing it with plastic pipe and a tracer wire is often the lasting fix.
Repairs that need a permit
A new connector or a remade joint is ordinary repair work. Replacing a run of pipe, a buried line or a section of the system is generally permitted work. Inside city limits that goes through the City of Gaffney's Community Development department, and outside the city through Cherokee County Building Safety.
In Gaffney specifically
Piedmont, not BPW
The Gaffney BPW handles electric, water and sewer. Gas leaks, meters and service lines in Gaffney are Piedmont's, at 800-752-7504.
Outbuildings on older lots
Detached garages and workshops on older lots were sometimes fed with buried steel, which corrodes over time. A smell near the outbuilding or a strip of dead grass are the clues.
Propane in rural Cherokee County
Propane is heavier than air and settles in crawlspaces and low rooms. Call 911 and your propane supplier, and stay out until they clear it.
CO alarms are separate
A carbon monoxide alarm warns of combustion gases, not a raw gas leak. Keep both a CO alarm and your nose working.
How a gas leak call runs
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You get safe and call the utility
Leave the house, call 911 or the utility from outside, and wait for them to make the area safe and shut off gas as needed.
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You call us, any hour
Tell us what the utility found and whether there is a red tag. A person answers day and night.
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Locate every leak
Electronic detection, leak solution and pressure decay testing, section by section, until we know where every leak is, including any the utility did not flag.
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Explain the repair
We show you the leak, explain what failed and why, and walk through the repair before we start.
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Replace the failed parts
Leaking fittings, valves, connectors or pipe are replaced with the correct material for the location.
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Pressure test
The repaired system is tested to the fuel gas code minimum and must hold with no drop.
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Restore service and relight
We purge the lines, coordinate with the utility if the meter was locked, relight every appliance and check each one for leaks.
The full guide to gas leak detection and repair, and everything else about plumbing and gas in Gaffney.