Yes. 72 Degrees Air Conditioning, Heating, and Plumbing provides emergency gas line repair around the clock in Fredericksburg, Kerrville, and the surrounding Hill Country. If you smell gas right now, stop reading, get everyone out of the building, and call from outside.

What to Do Before You Call

A suspected gas leak is one of the few home problems where the right first move is not to call a plumber. It is to leave.

  • Get everyone out. People and pets, outside and upwind.
  • Do not touch light switches, appliances, or garage door openers. A switch arcs when it moves. That is an ignition source.
  • Do not start a vehicle in an attached garage.
  • Leave the door open as you go if you can do it without delay.
  • Call from outside — your gas utility and emergency services first, then us.
  • Do not go back in until someone qualified says it is clear.

If you can safely reach an exterior shutoff without re-entering the building, turning it off is helpful. If reaching it means going back inside, skip it.

Signs of a Gas Leak

Natural gas and propane are both odorless on their own, so utilities add mercaptan, the sulfur compound that produces the familiar rotten-egg smell. That smell is the most reliable indicator, but it is not the only one.

Watch for a hissing or whistling sound near a gas line or appliance connection, dead or discolored vegetation in a line along your yard where nothing else is dying, bubbling in standing water or wet soil above a buried line, a persistently yellow or orange burner flame where it should be steady blue, and unexplained physical symptoms like headache, dizziness, or nausea that improve when you leave the house.

Some people cannot smell mercaptan at all, and a strong leak can fatigue the sense of smell quickly. Never treat “I do not smell it anymore” as evidence the problem resolved.

What Causes Gas Line Failures

Most of the emergency gas line repair calls we run trace back to a handful of causes. Corrosion is the big one on older buried steel lines, particularly where the coating was damaged during original installation. Physical damage is next — a fence post, a landscape auger, or a trencher finding a line nobody marked.

Then there are connection failures. Flex connectors at ranges, dryers, and water heaters age and crack, especially if the appliance has been moved for cleaning. Threaded joints can loosen with vibration and thermal cycling. And Hill Country soil movement puts real stress on rigid buried pipe during our wet-dry swings.

How We Repair It

We locate the leak before we cut anything. That means pressure testing the system to confirm a leak exists and isolate which section is losing pressure, then pinpointing the location with electronic detection and, where the line is buried, tracing before excavation.

Repair depends on the failure. A bad connector or a single failed joint is a straightforward replacement. A corroded run gets replaced as a section rather than patched, because a line that failed in one spot from age is rarely sound everywhere else. After any repair, the system gets pressure tested again and every appliance is relit and checked. We do not leave a gas system in service on the assumption that it is probably fine.

The Appliances on the Other End

A gas problem is often really an appliance problem. Gas water heaters and furnaces are the two most common sources, and both can create carbon monoxide risk when combustion or venting goes wrong — a separate hazard from the leak itself, and one that has no smell at all.

Because we run both trades, the same visit can address the leak and the equipment behind it. If a furnace is implicated, our emergency heating repair team handles it rather than scheduling a second company for next week.

Available Around the Clock

Gas emergencies do not keep business hours, which is why our 24/7 emergency plumbers are dispatched at any hour. If you are not in an emergency but something feels wrong, a scheduled plumbing inspection can pressure test your gas system before it becomes urgent.

From outside the building, call (830) 468-5316 or contact 72 Degrees.