Thank you for the speedy reply Mr Haller.
In short, whew! I thought I had gone way over board.
Im a one man show, here and have no one to bounce these sorts of things off so again, thank you.
In your opinion, would it have served me better to render out as before, but to frames & then bring the frames back in and re render at 8 bpc for a smaller file size or would it make a negligible difference for a long render?