Excellent excellent excellent, thank you. This is all great stuff, and thanks for the diagrams too. Lots to mull over, and final decisions will be determined by timber availability etc, but I think I can make anything work.

To be honest, the DT joints to me just sort of look elegant but I hear you on the shrinkage issues and there seem to be a few votes against it. Steve seems to employ them regularly, but the are quite fussy to get right, so a more simple approach is just fine with me!

Regarding concrete....it's that combination of great stuff that's also evil. It sure is handy, but we're happy to avoid it as much as we can. We actually took a course in stone construction, and were thinking about trying this, but we're worried about biting off too much on our first building. We'll try it when we build the house depending on local availability etc.

Thanks again, appreciate it!

Brent