Designing Kitchens and Bathrooms - Shower tile wall

I am new to this forum and searched for an answer.....With no luck I will post it here.....I am in need to open the tile wall that feeds my shower. The house was built in the 60's in Philadelphia. I have a leak in the copper (used very cheap grade copper when built) and there is NO access to that part of the pipe. I have 4 1/4" tiles on a wall with concrete and wire mesh (not sure what it is called). I need to remove the entire wall(s) and would like to know if just hitting with a hammer is the solution. Any advice is appreciated.

Greg

Are you removing the tile just to fix the leak? If so can you not get to it from the other side of the wall, so you don't have to demo the tile?

If you are planning on redoing the tile anyway, a sledgehammer or a fist maul is they way I usually do it.

The other side of the wall is another bathroom which I do not want to touch. I was planning to remodel this bathroom next year (sooner now). I removed about 1 square foot of the tile and not I have the cement backer withmesh and not sure how to remove this.

Frightmaster: You are in for a fun time. The wire lath/mesh probably runs around the entire length of all the tiles on the wall. There is no "easy" way to remove this stuff. What I have found that works pretty well is a demolition hammer with a flat chisel. Drive the chisel under the tiles and into the cement but NOT through the mesh. You want to get between the mesh and the cement. and it will all begin to come apart and drop off into the . Eventually you will be left with the wire mesh tacked on to all the studs, which can be removed with a prybar.
The problem with using a sledge or other pounding technique is you will eventually hit some studs and probably begin to dislodge tiles and or plaster on the other side of the wall.
I've demo several old bathrooms in old houses and easy does it goes a long way to not damage walls in other rooms.
Good luck.

I want to thank those who replied. All with great advice. I feel the slow and steady will win and guess I am in need of some good exercise.

Thanks again.