Renovating a farmhouse, plumbing and no phone line - questions!

My friend lives on a farm, it is very isolated, right out on the moors.

Over the last few years my friend decided to renovate the original farmhouse (circa 16th C) which at the time was merely four dilapidated walls and used by the cattle!

He's done a fantastic job so far and its nearly complete really. Just needs the plumbing to be done and it will be at least habitable. We are going to try hard to get it to this stage before lambing starts in a couple of weeks time.

So just a couple of questions.... could you plumb in a useable bathroom without a header tank? ie just run through the immersion tank as a short term measure?

Have any of you installed central heating into an old house? did you run the pipes around the skirting rather than under the floor boards (which wouldn't be possible in this house). The only heating at the moment is an ancient solid fuel Esse in the kitchen. All the electrics are in so we could plug in a couple of radiators for now but I thought it would be better to get the central heating in now before we start furnishing/putting down flooring (all the plaster work/beams and painting has been done).

And finally - BT flatly refuse to put in a phone line. They say there is no cable left to supply an extra line. There is a phone line in the main farmhouse though and I am sure you can split a line as we have a shared line here and there is no phone in the holiday cottage so the main farmhouse must have a whole cable running into it. Note that there is no mobile signal at the farm either. So that would mean no phone, no internet and no mobile

Do you have any suggestions please?

I take it that there's no gas supply (thinking combi boiler)

LOL - no, no gas supply. There is no mains water supply either - its a private source, gravity fed which is why I thought we might get away with plumbing into the immersion tank as a short term measure.

We have thought about putting in a combi boiler actually but it would be oil to run the water and central heating (if we ever do!!)

What about enquiring about other phone providers? What mobiles have you tried. REception is very poor where we are - in fact the only one that picks up [and not always] is 02

Do you need an immersion tank? Just quering as I was talking to a builder last week [just had a lot of plumbing done to get a new bathroom in] and he was saying that the new systems mean you cant have immersion heaters as there is no cylinder tank

Could you not convert the Esse stove to run the heating? I have a Doric [small Aga type] that is gravity fed. Had it converted a few years ago from wood stove to oil but its always been able to heat water etc. I dont use it but it was good for cooking and gravity feeding the room and keeping the chill out of the house when it was in use.

I probably dont make sense however I do live in an old stone built property

Your friend sounds brilliant to have taken on so much

Thanks Velvet Boxers - When I moved to this house I had my solid fuel Rayburn converted to oil and that heats the water, I have an outside boiler to do the central heating and I have to say that I would be really loathe to go back to solid fuel - its such a nightmare to keep it going.

re the mobiles - only Orange covers parts of Exmoor, I can honestly say that there is no other provider and that there is no chance whatsoever of getting mobile signal at the farm - the topography would not allow it.

However your suggestion of getting another provider to put a phone line in might be the way to go. I also thought that perhaps you could pay for another number (business) in the main farmhouse and then run the cable across to this house? dunno - food for thought!

Its all quite a mamouth task but it will be so worth it in the end!

UPDATE:

We have decided to definately go for electric heating upstairs and two woodburners downstairs (as logs are free!)

This evening we bought some lovely ceramic tiles for the kitchen - all 18 sq metres of it!!

The plumber is coming next week to start work and will put in the header tank, plumb in the bathroom and kitchen and then it will be habitable

Its all terribly exciting