Removing water rigid galvanized pipes under house

[Jack]

I'm in the process or repiping my whole house with copper. During the process in removing the iron pipes I've encountered a little problem under the house in a tight crawl space. There are a few sections of existing iron pipes where I wasn't able to remove with a 30" pipe wrench because of the limited space (no leverage) to work with under the crawl space. There was also a section where the pipe won't cooperate where I was able to crushed the pipe with the pipe wrench but still couldn't back the thread out of the coupling. Anyway I resorted to use my super sawzall (24 teeth bi-metal blade) but that is slow going, about 5-10 minutes to cut through a 3/4" pipe. Is there a better way to disassemble the iron pipes in a tight space situation?

[RayV]

Try a "Torch" or "Rescue Blade" for your sawzall.

[Harry K]

5-10 minutes per cut is way out of line. 24 tooth sounds like too fine a blade, try down around 16. I can cut 3/4 pipe with a manual hacksaw a lot faster than that.

Leave the pipe in place? I would unless it is in the way of the re-pipe job.

Harry K

[louie]

not really, just make sure you have the appropriate blade. A general purpose demolition blade won't last long, you need a fine toothed blade for metal (24tpi sounds about right, so you should be ok). Buy a bunch of blades, change them as soon as they start getting dull. Speaking from experience, when in a tight space, you'll find yourself using only about 1" of the blade and the teeth in that short section get worn off very quickly. Otherwise, time and persistence are about all you need, sorry - there's no easy solution that I've found yet for such a situation.

[Edwin Pawlowski]

Put a torch on it. Use care so you don't set the house on fire, but a propane torch may loosen it enough to move it.

Alternative is to get a better blade. 3/4" pipe should not take more than a minute or so.

[Sev]

Re: fire- wet down area you're working in if going the torch route.

[Don Young]

Fire in a confined crawl space is not a really good idea anyhow. Don Young

[hallerb]

going to be fire for sweating copper.

probably way better, cheaper and easier to use PEX plastic flexible line