Building a Casa Clima in Piemonte....remember, start at the end.: Containers and Foundations

Hello all, We certainly hadn't expected on posting once every 3 months, but we've been busy building and that was most important.
And busy we have been.
Sara arrived in Piemonte and we setup house in our rented apartment (60 m2, about 600 sq ft) in the small town of Vico Canavese. This quaint little town is about 10 minutes up the valley from Lugnacco, and offers us a place to sleep and warm shower after a long day in the trenches. It's small, but has all the services you could want, from the various grocery stores, fruit vendors, bank, mechanic and gas stations.
We had to "modernize" the apartment a bit, as most of the appliances and furniture were from somewhere around the 50s. They apartment hadn't been used in many years we think. It turns out the parents passed away about 10 years ago, and to further lead us to believe that the apartment hadn't seen anyone for a long time was the calender from 2001! Anyway, after serious clean up (from Sara) and a few modern appliances (microwave and washing machine), we felt quite comfortable. We even installed an Internet dish, as the local phone company hasn't got around to ADSL up here yet.
Joe got used to Italian dogs. This is quite a statement, as their seems to be lots of dogs, and they all bark and snap at strangers. Not quite what our boy is used to. But he now seems to be just ignoring them, and has made friends with some others that just want to play and be friends.
On the house front, we have made serious headway!
After much patience our containers finally arrived! Just as the containers were loaded, we discovered that the port of Montreal had gone on strike and no freight was moving in or out of the port. So our containers were stuck in Calgary. Fortunately the strike only last a few short days, but the backlog of containers meant that out shipment was delayed over 3 weeks. Anyway finally they arrived in Genoa and after the usual customs bureaucracy the containers were dispatched from the port. The truck drivers got lost in the Valchiusella and after a few phone calls we droive down to rescue them. Anyway, the containers showed up finally and we started unloading them. It was like a big birthday party. So many presents.

The first container arrived

And the doors swung open to reveal.....

... all the stuff we had packed in Calgary.

Joe, getting ready to move a load of trusses down the road.

Not as scary as it looks, but I wasn't driving....

The job done, and the labour sleeping on the job!

After some false starts with the rain (BIG mud!), things finally dried out and we were able to remove the rocks from the house and dig the foundation. We setup the boards and got work setting out the plastic bag, that all the Italians shook their heads at. However they were all willing to give it the benefit of the doubt until proven otherwise.

Setting up the boards.

Laying out the plastic wrap....

.... and starting the over 2000 kg of iron.

Iron work ready for the pour.

One very serious challenge we had was trying to figure out how we were going to get concrete down to the property. We had a couple of companies look at the road, and they all said "no way". It seemed like the only way to do it was to mix the concrete down at the land in small batches, not something we wanted to do. After hunting around some more, I found a company that was willing to send their trucks AND a pump to pour the concrete. What a relief! We were very excited when the pumo showed up and the first load of concrete.

The pump showed up.....

.... and the first load of concrete mix.

And the pour started, very much to everyone's curiosity!

The pour continued.

And the trucks came and went.

We smoothed concrete as the pour progressed.

And by lunch, we had a fully pour foundation. WOW!

This was as of September 27, 2010. After letting the concrete set for a day or so, we then started on the job of preparing the "igloos" and wire mesh. The igloos are a dome like plastic box, that creates an air space under the foundation, so the concrete for the floors does not sit directly on the ground. It allows air to flow under the floor and reduces humidity.
Once we had this ready, we called the pumper and cement trucks back to finish pouring the foundation slab.