Today we are starting excavations for the new house.  Our foundations are not traditional concrete strip foundations.  Instead, we are excavating the entire footprint of the new house.  We will then build up masonry walls directly off the chalk (that we are hoping to find when we excavate, like we did in the trial holes), which will act as our foundations and elevate our straw bale walls above ground level.  Within the foundation walls, we will start our limecrete slab from the same excavated ground level.