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Since the last entry we have completed the upstairs. This area consists of two bedrooms and an open plan play area landing. Carpets were fitted after the Christmas break. Lights, switches, sockets and fire alarms have now been installed. My wife is working her way through the rooms downstairs. Painting, caulking and tidy up plastering work. We are really happy with how this is coming together. The temporary supply electrics have now been taken away and we are now wired up to our consumer unit. It’s great to be able to use lighting and sockets throughout the house. The bathroom, en-suite and utility have been ordered today so hopefully I will have some progress here in a month or so. Feels very close to being finished or being able to move in!

I am about a month behind the schedule in my mind. My signing-up with a timber-frame company was delayed as my favoured company moved their factory over Christmas. In the end I seriously considered no less than seven frame companies, met with five, and visited the factories of four. I have now chosen the company and will be signing on the dotted line soon. It is a local Cambridgeshire firm and represented for me the best balance between cost, their approach, and the personalities involved. Observations from the last month: Old Buildhub searches work well. I have text shortcut the throws the following in to a google search: "site:buildhub.org.uk". That enables effortless searching of the Buildhub archive for any string. For example, when thinking about which SE to use to design my slab, I threw "site:buildhub.org.uk Tanner" into Google a re-read the posts by @Alexphd1, @Triassic, @RichC and others, some of which were years old, arranged a call with Hilliard himself in Ireland, and all my problems went away. Same applied for bolstering my list of raft installers and a host of other subjects besides. I looked again at the make-up of my roof and foundations. My dwelling has a ridge height limit in its deeds and I want high, 3m, ceilings. I went around the houses on both subjects (thanks to you all for your contributions to my threads on the subjects). On the roof I ended up somewhere new, and flipped form a cold to a warm room, and saved about 200mm. On the floor, I ended up back where I started, with an insulated concrete raft attached to screw piles but, with the help of Hilliard Tanner, it will be a thinner 100mm raft, with strengthening ribs, and a 200mm ring beam. Because the raft will be tied-in to the screw piles the insulation beneath will not be load bearing. This means that PIR will work just as well as EPS as insulation. PIR is thinner for a given U-value so once again I will be saving about 200mm of thickness. Resolving the issues the ridge and front-door-threshold heights then enabled me dive deeply in to the levels. I have a small but complex plot and deciding levels took quite some head-scratching, especially as my site is supposedly "no-dig" because of previous tree roots. Levels are now done I think. With all the fundamental decisions about the build now resolved, the cavalcade of actions leading up to the start on site can now begin in earnest: frame design, engineering inputs, construction drawings; planning-conditions discharge (and maybe non-material amendment); tenders for groundworkers, screw-pile suppliers and installers, raft makers, rooflights, windows; site insurance, building control, warranty. Oh, and I have re-designed the façade once again. All systems go! Spirits are high.