This is the water supply line coming into my basement. 4 feet below the ground (frost line). My house is from 1940 and I assume that everything in these pictures are original.
I recently converted from galvanized steel to pex beyond the water meter for my entire downstairs due to water pressure issues. I can't do the upstairs yet because I'm not ready to tear down walls and upstairs is getting full pressure so things are good.
Anyways, if I ask the city to shut off the water at the street then would I be able to safely unscrew either that short pipe or the valve? I would use copper and continue the run to my pex transition. I have a sawzall with appropriate blades for cutting steel.
During my project I tried unscrewing a few runs of pipe with pipe wrenches and one of the joints simply broke off instead of unscrewing so if that happens here then I'm not sure about how I would proceed.
We bought the house 3 years ago and it has looked like this the whole time.
Any insight is appreciated!
Best Answer
This can be a problem with old galvanized pipe if you had pieces break inside I would expect the same or worse here. I would purchase a kit for an emergency repair because my experience has been when 1 piece crumbles the rest is in similar shape. You should look into driving some ground rods also years ago houses only had 1 ground the water pipe, I have worked in a community that removed the metal pipe and installed plastic but they did not install ground rods, people were getting shocked so it would be a good idea to add them now while you are working in that area. Changing from galvanized to copper don’t forget to get a dielectric Union this keeps the copper from creating a circuit with the galvanized pipe and electrolysis eating the pipe in short time. After seeing the latest photo I would plan to replace everything from the Union on the meter to the house. This still could turn into a can of worms but I have had fewer problems with heavy cast than galvanized, the galvanized usually corrodes where the threads are cut through the zinc coating just as yours probably will.