Mon–Sat 7am–6pm · 24/7 Emergency Line
Serving Santa Ana & Central OC
Stop and do this first: get everyone and any pets out of the house immediately, don't touch a light switch, phone, or anything electrical on your way out, leave the door open behind you, and once you're a safe distance away, outside and away from the building, call 911 and SoCalGas's 24/7 emergency line at 1-800-427-2200. Don't go back inside until SoCalGas or the fire department tells you it's safe.
Call 911SoCalGas 1-800-427-2200
That sequence is the utility's and the regulator's, not ours. The California Public Utilities Commission directs that if you suspect a gas leak you “first leave the area on foot then call your pipeline operator or 911,” and publishes SoCalGas's emergency line as 1-800-427-2200.
This page is not the right resource for an active emergency; our full step-by-step guide, what to do if you smell gas in your house, covers the complete sequence, and it's worth reading now, before you ever need it.
Everything below this point describes a different, narrower situation: a suspected slow or hidden gas leak, not an active emergency, and what our non-invasive locate service actually does and doesn't cover.
Gas leak detection, as we perform it, is a non-invasive visit to locate exactly where a suspected slow or hidden gas leak is coming from, using tracer-gas testing and electronic detection methods, without digging or opening up your home to search for it. It is not an emergency response service, and it is not gas-line repair. We locate; we don't fix a gas line or a gas appliance ourselves, and we're direct about that boundary below rather than letting it stay vague.
This service is for situations like a persistent faint gas smell near one appliance, a gas bill that's climbed without a clear reason, or a hissing sound that comes and goes, once an active emergency has genuinely been ruled out. If what you're dealing with is a sudden, strong smell right now, stop reading and follow the emergency sequence at the top of this page.
Natural gas is naturally odourless. What you smell is mercaptan, an odorant added deliberately so that a leak announces itself long before it reaches a dangerous concentration, and it is usually described as rotten eggs or sulphur.
That is the safety system working, and it is why a smell is treated as information rather than as an emergency in itself. A strong smell means leave and call the utility from outside. A faint, intermittent one is still worth chasing down, and it often traces to a pilot light that has gone out or a fitting weeping slowly at the shut-off valve behind an appliance.
Once the utility has made the property safe and confirmed the leak is on your side of the meter, that is where our work starts.
Five patterns are worth a locate visit rather than an emergency call: a faint smell near one appliance, a gas bill that has climbed without a usage change, an intermittent hiss near a meter or line, dead vegetation over an outdoor gas run, and a pilot light that keeps going out.
When in doubt, the safer default is always to treat it as an emergency and follow the steps above. None of these on their own are a reason to panic, and none of them should be ignored either. They're the reason a locate visit exists as a distinct, non-emergency service.
We locate a suspected gas leak with two methods used together: tracer gas introduced into the line, and handheld electronic and acoustic detection at the surface. Neither requires digging or opening drywall to search.
Both methods exist for the same reason all of our non-invasive detection work does: to tell you precisely where the problem is before anyone starts opening up your home or yard to look for it.
You tell us what you’ve noticed. We locate the leak with acoustic and thermal equipment before anything is opened up. We mark the exact spot and explain what we found in plain language. You get a written quote on site, and the same crew does the repair.
The detection visit is a flat $150 to $500, credited toward the repair if you go ahead. The full sequence — what helps before we arrive, what happens at each step, and the four things you get at the end — is on what happens on a leak detection visit.
We locate suspected gas leaks; we do not repair gas lines or gas appliances, and we do not respond to active emergencies. This is the one place on our site where our usual “we detect and repair” positioning narrows, and each part of that boundary is set out below.
A gas leak locate visit is priced the same way our other non-invasive detection visits are: a flat-rate fee, in the same $150 to $500 range we quote across our detection services, confirmed before the visit and in a firm written quote once we've seen the specific situation.
If we can't locate the suspected leak, our no-find-no-fee guarantee applies to this visit the same way it applies to any other detection call. One real difference from our water-leak services: since we don't perform the gas-line repair ourselves, the detection fee doesn't get credited toward a repair we complete.
If a licensed gas-fitting contractor or SoCalGas ends up doing that repair, that's a separate cost and a separate provider, not something we can bundle or discount.
Digging blindly to search for a suspected gas leak carries obvious risk on its own, cutting into a line you haven't located yet, or disturbing soil and structure around a pipe you're only guessing at. Locating the leak precisely first, before any digging or repair happens, is exactly why tracer-gas and electronic detection exist as their own step, distinct from the repair that follows. We find it; a licensed gas-fitting professional or SoCalGas fixes it, in that order, not the other way around.
A suspected slow gas leak isn't something to investigate by wandering around your house or yard trying to smell it out more precisely, and it isn't something a general handyman fix addresses either. Locating a gas leak accurately takes the same non-invasive detection equipment and hands-on experience we use for water leaks, applied to a different, higher-stakes system. That precision is the value we bring: telling you exactly where the problem is, honestly, before anyone starts digging or calling in a repair crew for the wrong section of line.
We're based in Santa Ana and serve the city along with a growing list of central Orange County cities. See our full service areas page to confirm we cover your specific city or neighborhood.
If we can't locate a suspected gas leak during your paid locate visit, there's no detection fee, the same no-find-no-fee guarantee we apply to every detection service we offer. Our 2-year workmanship warranty covers repairs we complete ourselves; since we don't perform gas-line or gas-appliance repair, that warranty doesn't extend to gas work; any repair is completed by SoCalGas or a licensed gas-fitting contractor under their own terms. See our full guarantees and warranties page for the complete scope.
Non-emergency locate visits, Monday to Saturday. If you smell gas right now, leave the house and call 911 and SoCalGas at 1-800-427-2200 instead.
(714) 386-7923Non-emergency locate visits only Schedule a Locate VisitNo. We locate suspected gas leaks non-invasively, using tracer-gas testing and electronic detection. Gas-line and gas-appliance repair is licensed gas-fitting work, completed by SoCalGas or a licensed gas-fitting contractor, not by us.
Leave the house immediately with everyone and any pets, don’t touch a switch, phone, or anything electrical, leave the door open, and call 911 and SoCalGas’s 24/7 emergency line, 1-800-427-2200, from a safe distance outside. See our full what to do if you smell gas guide for the complete sequence.
Our locate visit is a flat-rate fee in the $150 to $500 range, the same as our other non-invasive detection services, confirmed in a firm written quote before the visit. If we can’t locate the leak, you don’t pay the fee.
That depends on your policy and the specific circumstances, and we can’t promise a coverage outcome. Check with your insurance carrier directly about what your policy covers.
If our equipment genuinely can’t locate a suspected leak during your paid locate visit, you don’t pay the detection fee, the same no-find-no-fee guarantee we apply to every detection service.
Yes. Any gas smell is worth taking seriously. If it’s faint but persistent and localized to one appliance, that’s a candidate for a locate visit once you’re confident it isn’t an active emergency; if you’re unsure, treat it as an emergency and call 911 and SoCalGas first.
No. An active gas leak goes to 911 and SoCalGas’s 24/7 emergency line, not to us; we don’t dispatch to active gas emergencies. Once it’s safe and the situation is a suspected slow or hidden leak rather than an active emergency, our line is available to schedule a locate visit during our Monday through Saturday hours.
A gas-fired water heater can occasionally develop a gas smell, which is the same active-emergency situation described above, not a separate category. Our water heater leak detection page covers water leaks from the unit itself; any gas smell near it follows the same emergency sequence on this page, not a water-leak troubleshooting step.
Gas-line repair is licensed gas-fitting work, a distinct trade from the non-invasive water-leak detection and repair we perform. We’re direct about that boundary rather than blur it, and we refer gas repairs to SoCalGas or a licensed gas-fitting contractor.