Everything I am reading online about removing and installing faucets pretty much goes on the lines of - inset faucet from above, tighten cap screw from below, connect lines and done. But the problem I am facing in removing the existing faucet is that it has a fat t-pipe below, so there is not way it can be pulled out from the top. (Pics below: top, bottom, front. Sorry about the inverted image, somehow the upload manager insists on displaying it as such even though it shows up fine on my PC). So there has to be some way to remove the top part - but how? I did remove a small piece from the top of the handle and remove a screw from inside, but that did nothing. Then I tried brute force, trying to force the level anti-clockwise. That broke off the left handle. Tried grabbing the left top part with pliers and rotating but the grip is not sufficient. So what is the trick here? How do I remove this faucet? Thanks in advance for the help.

5 weeks ago today we bought a house, and for 5 weeks we have been dealing with the stench of sewer gas in the house. I have posted several different threads about this problem as we have experimented with duct tape over drains and investigated the possibility that the problem could be with the air conditioner. We have experienced the stench with every drain taped and had it get worse when the a/c vent was closed. We've experienced the stench when we didn't even use that bathroom at all. We've had 3 plumbers (one of them 5 times) and 2 a/c guys out here. The stink would never manifest for a plumber.....until tonight. Praise God, the plumber finally smelled it! It was in rare form. We did the "peppermint test", and one of the plumber's assistants and I smelled the peppermint in the master bath (the source of the stink) near the toilet. A couple of weeks ago, we had that toilet's wax ring and phlange replaced. The plumber said there could be a crack in the toilet, and the only way to tell for sure if the toilet is the source of all we've been going through is to pull it, seal off the opening (which he did with some type of pressurized gadget), and see if the stink goes away. So far so good. My question is this: Could a crack in a toilet be causing all of this problem.......even causing the whole house to stink??? Just this morning - on the opposite side of the house - there was a sewage smell probably 5 times more intense than what we've been smelling in the bathroom, coming from the air return duct (where we put the filters) in the hallway. Could a toilet cause that???? Why would a toilet with a crack cause stink after we take a shower? Why would it cause stink when we hadn't used the bathroom at all for two days? Why would the a/c coming on (vent in the ceiling) make the problem worse? Thanks in advance guys.