Welcome to the BrickWood forum, and glad to hear your Barile Grande project is underway.
Hoisting the slabs onto the concrete base seems to be the most intimidating part of this project for many builders. They are heavy, but there are ways to get those babies up there.
Here is an extensive thread on the subject that should give you some ideas:
And two thoughts:
- It’s not really just you and your son. You can also invite Archimedes along. Yeah, I know he lived around 300 BC, but his “Lever Principle” is an immortal discovery that will help you get the slabs up there.
- The base will not break or shift while you’re pushing, pulling, hoisting, shifting, and levering the slabs up on top. It is one less thing to worry about.
And finally, more builders in recent years have tended to build each slab in place, as @pebecker describes. Not for nothing, but the wooden tools in his great photo are a lever (the long arm that extends out the back of the base) that pivots at the edge of the slab (which makes it the short arm being levered). Ingenious.
Read his post, and also the thread I linked for other ideas. And if you’re still stumped, come back to this thread and ask more questions. We’ve all had to deal with this one way or another, and folks here are happy to share what we’ve learned!