JustinW wrote:

Hi All,

I'm rehabbing a building that is 40-50 years old. While mowing the tall
grass, I ran over a outside faucet and destroyed it. I dug up the line
and intended to plug it. It was half inch galvanized pipe. It was
originally assembled with some type of thread-sealing pipe dope that has
long ago turned rock hard.

What I tried to remove the first connection, I put a cheater bar over a
pipe wrench and tried to unscrew the damaged fitting. The pipe was
weakened by corrosion and it just crushed. I went up the water line and
broke several other fittings.

I'm now working under the house in a tough environment -- very little
crawlspace, sloping ground and a few other things. I'm trying to remove a
half inch reducer screwed into a three quarter galvanized T. It's the last
fitting before I encounter serious expense doing some wholesale repiping.

So far, I've used a propane torch on the galvanized T while periodically
dousing the reducer with water. I've also used about 5,000 gallons of
penetrating oil. I don't have room for a cheater (good thing huh?) and so
far I can't budge the reducer with two-foot pipe wrenches.

Any thoughts or ideas would be seriously appreciated.


Justin

Heat would have been first choice too...

Next choice is to weaken the TEE so that it
can be unscrewed from the pipe feeding into it.

Weaken it by hacksawing roughly in-line with
the pipe entering the TEE. That would be at
right angle to the pipe threads. You don't need
to saw all the way *into* the pipe threads,
just right up to them. Then, take a chisel
and split the TEE open like a melon. Back the
bottom of the TEE up with a brick, slab of iron, etc.
You don't need to make a big opening in the split,
just crack enough to make the threads let go.

When you reassemble some kind of fitting to the
pipe end, use Loctite on the threads to fill in
any damage to them. (alternately, follow the lengthy
thread to come about pipe dope, Teflon tape, et al.)

Jim