Whats your opinion? What's the right thing do do?

amother

Orchid

Sat, Aug 22 2020, 11:29 pm

doodlesmom wrote:

For people who sleep in their sukka a rain cover is very important. Otherwise when it starts to rain in the middle of the night, which is quiet often in NY, they need to shlep all the linens and mattresses all the way indoors and then back for when it stops (let’s not talk about putting all that on wet floors) this can go on 2-3 times a night....

How does this work practically? If it's not a kosher succah with a tarp on it, then I assume they keep it uncovered and only cover when it rains? What if it's the middle of the night? Do they have to just whip it out and on the minute they feel the first drop? It's not that easy to put a tarp on a huge structure, especially in the rain. Then I guess I could see the appeal of a retractable awning. When it rains here our succah (and whatever we left in there) just gets wet, but nobody tries to sleep out there. (*I only ever tried to sleep in the succah one time and I woke up drenched at 3AM after an unexpected shower).

Another sidenote q: do people use real mattresses and linens in the succah? I always thought of it like camping, with sleeping bags and foam mats or air mattresses.

amother

Crimson

Sun, Aug 23 2020, 12:54 am

doodlesmom wrote:

Not as a big deal as you make it to be. Everyone shleps in their own mattress and continues sleeping indoors. Nobody I know waits for rain to stop in order to go back out to sleep.

watergirl

Sun, Aug 23 2020, 9:34 am

amother [ OP ] wrote:

For those who say they never saw an awning, what do people use to cover a porch or eating area in your backyard during the summer? I'm sure you too use a large canopy to cover from rain or sunshine? For sukkas, we use it so that it shouldn't pour into while we eat, sleep and ruin all decorations.

Since you asked... we do not cover our porch/outside eating area during the summer. So it gets wet. It dries. Nothing gets ruined. What am I missing that these things are “required”? We have only weatherproof outdoor seating and even a fire pit. If its raining or too hot/sunny, we don't go outside.

crust wrote:

2500

There are different rules for the not-handy population. Smile

Talking from experience, the aggravation of setting an awning up by yourself is not worth a saving of 1000 dollars.

And its not like one option is 75 dollars and the other one is 2500.

For what its worth, we have a set up now that we own our home. It quite literally cost less than $75. My husband is not handy. He bought a few thingies from home depot for 75 cents each. He had a friend help him drill them into the brick outer wall of our house where we put the sukkah. For sukkos, he rigs up a thing with the chashuv blue tarp (mesorah from our fathers and fathers fathers!) and a long pvc pipe
At the other end. The pvc pipe is attached to the far end of the tarp with some rip-tie thingies (a few bucks from Amazon for a huge container). On the other end, the tarp is tied to the thingies that are drilled into the house. Those are left there all year. We retie it each year with some twine and cut it when sukkos is over. The pvc pipe and tarp roll up and stay on the wall end of the sukkah. If it rains, my husband pulls it down if he wants to. But we still eat inside when it rains because there is no difference between eating in a covered sukkah and eating inside.

OP, a hookup like this would work for you too. It would be FAR cheaper to pay a handyman to rig something like this up than to spend $1500 or $2500 when you say you are financially struggling. It is definitely not as graceful, not as easy, not as simple as these fancy-schmancy things I’m sure. Where I live, nobody has anything like that. If anything, people rig up their own like I described. That’s where my husband got the idea. And yes where I live it rains a ton on sukkos. We do what we can afford.

If you still want to spend the money, I would ask a shailah before putting this on CC. My rav holds it is assur to put something on CC if I will not have the money to pay it off. Or if it is not something I NEED and just WANT. This is in the latter category. I’ve provided an alternate way to cover the sukkah that will cost far far less than $1500. If your husband still wants to buy the $1500 or $2500 one, I would ask a rav.