Smell gas right now? Leave the house and call Washington Gas or 911 first. For gas line repairs, new lines, and appliance hookups, you reach the Holdsy Plumbing team directly, not a call center.
We'll follow up within one business day. No pressure, no upsells.
Gas line repair is one of those jobs where the first thing to know isn't who to hire, it's what to do before you dial anyone. If you smell a strong, steady rotten-egg odor, hear hissing near a line or meter, or feel lightheaded, that's an active leak: get everyone out of the house, don't flip a switch or light anything, and call Washington Gas or 911 from outside. They shut the gas off at the meter. We are not the first call for a house full of gas, and any plumber telling you otherwise is selling you something. Once the gas is safely off and the emergency is handled, that's when the Holdsy Plumbing team comes in to find and fix the fault. Call (301) 834-2944, describe what happened, and you talk to the person who does the work, not a dispatcher.
For everything short of an active leak, gas line repair and installation is a diagnosis-first job, and where you live shapes a lot of it. A big share of the older housing stock around Gaithersburg, Montgomery Village, and the established parts of Rockville was plumbed with black-iron gas pipe, and after 40-plus years that steel corrodes at the threaded joints, which is where slow seeps almost always start. On top of that, Montgomery County requires a permit and a county inspection for gas line work, and any new appliance line has to be pressure-tested and signed off before it's put into service. Holdsy Plumbing is owner-operated and insured, we pull the permit, we pressure-test the line, and we don't leave a joint uninspected. That's the honest version of gas work in this county.
Gas line repair at a corroded threaded joint in a Gaithersburg, MD home
If you smell gas, treat it as a leak until proven otherwise, and get the sequence right: leave first, call from outside. Natural gas is odorized with mercaptan, that sharp rotten-egg smell, precisely so you notice it before it reaches a dangerous concentration. Don't wait to see if it goes away. Do these things in order, and do them from a neighbor's or the sidewalk once you're clear of the house.
A faint whiff near one appliance that comes and goes is a different situation than a house you can smell from the driveway. The faint one is often a loosened fitting or a pilot that's out, and it's worth a call rather than a panic. The strong, spreading one is an evacuate-and-call-the-utility situation, every time. When you're not sure which you've got, err toward getting out and calling the utility. Call (301) 834-2944 once it's safe and we'll take it from there.
New gas appliance line installation and pressure test in a Montgomery County, MD home
Gas line repair almost always comes down to the joints, not the middle of a pipe run, and on the older black-iron systems common across Gaithersburg that's a corrosion-at-the-threads story. Threaded steel connections are where the pipe dope or tape ages out and where rust works its way into the seal, so a seep starts as a smell near a fitting long before it becomes anything worse. The repair is rarely the whole line. It's the failed section and the joints around it, done properly and pressure-tested before it goes back into service.
On these older Montgomery County homes, nine gas leaks out of ten are at a threaded joint, not a split pipe. Find the joint, cut back to sound metal, re-thread and re-seal it, then pressure-test the whole run before anyone lights a pilot. That last step is the part cheap work skips.
Here's how a repair actually runs once the line is safe to work on:
Repeated small seeps on an old black-iron system that's failing at joint after joint is a different conversation than one bad fitting. At that point you're weighing section repairs against a gas repipe, the same way you'd weigh patching versus replacing water lines. Describe the history when you call and we'll tell you straight which way the math points. Call (301) 834-2944 and tell us where you smell it and how often.
Gas line repair at a corroded threaded joint in a Gaithersburg, MD home
Montgomery County requires a permit and a county inspection for gas line work, and that's not red tape to work around, it's the thing that protects you. A gas line that was run without a permit and never inspected is a line no one confirmed holds pressure, and it's also a problem the day you sell the house and it turns up at inspection. We do it the way the county requires because that's the only way that's actually safe.
Owner-operated and insured means the person who pulls the permit is the person who runs the pipe and stands in front of the inspector. There's no crew you've never met, no commission structure pushing an upsell, and no incentive to skip the test to save an hour. You get the line done to code, tested, and signed off, and you get a straight answer about what it needed and why. Planning a new appliance line or a conversion? Request a free estimate through the contact form and we'll scope the gas load before quoting.
New gas appliance line installation and pressure test in a Montgomery County, MD home
Not every gas problem announces itself with a strong smell. Some of the earliest signs of a failing gas line are quiet, and knowing them means you catch a seep before it becomes an evacuation. If you notice any of these, it's worth a call even without a dramatic odor.
A dead stripe of grass over a gas line you know is there is not a lawn problem. That's gas escaping underground, and it's worth a call the same day, even if you can't smell a thing standing over it.
None of these is a reason to panic, and none of them is the strong, spreading, get-out-now smell that means call the utility. They're the early signals that a line is starting to fail, and catching one now is how a small repair stays small. Notice one of these? Call (301) 834-2944 and describe it, and we'll tell you whether it needs a same-day look or a scheduled visit.
If you smell a strong, steady gas odor right now, stop reading, leave the house, and call Washington Gas or 911 from outside first. For gas line repairs, new gas lines, and appliance connections once things are safe, describe it to the Holdsy Plumbing team directly at (301) 834-2944: where you smell it, which appliance, and whether it's a repair or a new hookup. For a planned installation or conversion, use the contact form to request a free estimate and we'll scope the gas load before quoting.
Call now (301) 834-2944 