Underground Commercial Gas Line Repair in Phoenix

You do, from the meter outlet onward. Southwest Gas's customer buried piping brochure puts it directly: the business, not the utility, owns the gas piping that runs from the meter to the structure and to other outside gas appliances. At an older commercial property the meter can sit well away from the building, which leaves a long buried run that nobody has looked at in decades. Pad sites, multi-building campuses and restaurants with patio heaters and outdoor fireplaces often have several. Our page on why underground gas lines at businesses fail explains the corrosion side in depth.

If the leak is on the service line between the street and the meter, or at the meter itself, that's Southwest Gas's pipe and its repair.

Southwest Gas lists the signs: a rotten egg smell, even faint; hissing from the ground; dirt or water blowing into the air; dead or dying plants with no other explanation; standing water that keeps bubbling. Around a commercial building that might be a dead strip in the landscaping between the meter bank and the back door, or a gas bill that climbs with no new equipment.

If you notice any of those, get people away from the area. From a safe place, call 911 and Southwest Gas at 877-860-6020. Don't probe or dig to find it.

This is the step people skip, and it's the one that matters most on a commercial lot. Arizona's excavation law, A.R.S. 40-360.22, requires anyone digging in a street, right-of-way, utility easement, apartment community or mobile home park to find out first where underground facilities are. The utilities mark their lines within two working days of the request, and the marks are good for 15 working days. Southwest Gas tells customers to call 811 at least two working days before digging.

But Southwest Gas also says plainly that customer buried piping can't be located by calling 811. The one-call system marks the operators' lines: the gas service, water, sewer, electric and telecom crossing your site. Your yard line isn't on anyone's map but yours. So a buried gas repair has two locates:

1. 1The 811 ticket, white-lined first as the statute requires, so every utility line near the dig is marked.
2. 2A private locate of your own line. Plastic gas pipe installed to code has a tracer wire we can put a signal on. Steel pipe can often be traced directly. A line with no tracer and no records takes more work: following it from the riser at each end and potholing by hand.

Within 24 inches of a marked line, the statute's definition of careful excavation means hand tools only. On a gas leak, we hand-dig the last stretch over our own line too.

Once the leak is exposed, what we see decides the job. A single failed joint or a short damaged section on otherwise sound, coated pipe can be cut out and replaced. But if the steel is pitted along its length, is bare or galvanized, or has failed before, patching it just moves the next leak a few feet. The code says zinc coating "shall not be deemed adequate protection for underground gas piping," so galvanized pipe in the ground is already out of compliance.

The replacement is usually polyethylene with a yellow tracer wire, rising through an approved anodeless riser at each end, or factory-coated steel with every joint wrapped. Chandler's permit manual adds detail many cities share in practice: buried metal pipe is factory coated and at least Schedule 40, field wrapping is two layers of 20 mil tape with primer, and galvanized pipe or fittings are prohibited underground. Plastic can't run under the building; Section 404.14 allows pipe beneath a building only inside a protective conduit.

Sometimes the better answer isn't new pipe. Southwest Gas's brochure offers relocating the meter next to the building, at the customer's expense, which can shrink or eliminate the buried run you're responsible for. On a long, failing yard line, we'll lay both options side by side.

New pipe goes back at the depth your city requires, and that isn't the same everywhere:

The trench gets a firm, continuous bed under the pipe, and the work stays open until it's pressure tested and inspected. In Phoenix, a meter locked for a customer-side leak needs a permit, a city inspection and a city clearance before Southwest Gas restores service. More cities are compared on our gas pipe burial depth by city page, and the test is covered under commercial gas pressure testing.

We locate the line, find the leak, hand-dig to it, repair or replace the section, run tracer wire with any plastic pipe, pressure test, call for the inspection and send the clearance to Southwest Gas. We offer 24/7 emergency service for leaks and give you an upfront price before work starts. Related: commercial gas line service, leak detection, commercial gas line repair for above-ground piping, and property management plumbing.