Plans for building a sukkah shlock

Question

A sukkah roof has to be open to the sky, and made of loose, plant-based material. Practically speaking, this means that everything inside gets wet when it rains.....unless your sukkah has a "shlock," some device that does not stay permanently on the sukkah (so you can remove it when it doesn't rain) and will keep the water out.
You can buy a shlock from some sukkah retailers, but those are either expensive or low quality (i.e. just a tarp).

What I'm looking for is a complete plan to construct your own DIY shlock.
I don't think that the just-a-tarp-shlock is a good idea, because it will just fill with water and break. Hard plastic is better, but difficult to make it that it's easy to remove. A sloped, retractable awning (made out of soft plastic) would be a great idea, but sounds very complicated. (if you could make it simple, that would be a great answer!)

Best answers should come from your own experience, and be well-explained.

Answer 1

I made a sukkah with hard wooden covers like the top of a cardboard box:
Either the schach must be wholly within the walls, or the shlak has be affixed to protrusions at each upper corner (yellow) so it covers the entire sukkah.

The hinges (yellow) have to be able to rotate 270°.

The shlak can be covered with tarp (blue) to improve its water resistance.

It only needs a very slight slant for the water to run off, as it does not pool on a solid surface.

I attached sticks (red) at the center corners (similar to those moving high window shades), which are used to swing the covers over the wall and hanging straight down the long walls, thus avoiding being caught in the wind.

Answer 2

I have not built a cover for my sukkah, but I can draw from past experience camping in a yurt. A yurt is designed to support a small fire inside, in the center, for which purpose there is a smoke hole in the top. Because you don't want to get rained on when not burning a fire, the smoke hole has a cover. The best yurt designs have a domed ring in the center (that the cover goes over), to prevent pooling; you don't have that option with a sukkah, so we'll have to use a sloped approach instead, like for a lean-to.

First, get a pair of 2x2s that are a foot or so longer, per 8' of cover length, than your sukkah is tall. (A one-foot difference from front to back provided enough slope for drainage for an 8-foot-deep canvas lean-to in my camping group this summer. If you're trying to cover 20 feet, though, you'll need more height to get that slope.) In the top of each, set a spike that protrudes a couple inches -- a large nail works. Also prepare two blocks of wood thicker than the spike is long and drill a hole partway through each into which the spike can fit. (Chunks of 4x4 would do.) Sand all exposed cut sides of these blocks, as you'll be pulling your cover over them and don't want to risk tearing it on a rough edge.

Choose one side of your sukkah (you might opt for the one that is "ante-windward", the one the wind is least likely to come from) and attach these poles to your existing vertical supports by screwing, bolting, or lashing. Do this on the outside of the sukkah to avoid interfering with your s'chach. We will call this the "tall side" henceforth. If your sukkah is oblong, I recommend doing this on a short side, so your cover is "longer but narrower" as opposed to "shorter but wider". It'll be easier to roll it on and off that way.

Procure (or assemble) a covering of the right size plus a few feet in length. A plastic tarp is easy but can tear, particularly once you add grommets (below). Canvas will do a better job of keeping you dry, but you'll probably have to sew as the widest canvas I've seen for sale is about 58" wide. If your canvas didn't come pre-treated, apply water-proofing (and it's a good idea to seal your seams too). Set grommets at all four corners. (Note: if setting grommets in canvas, it's best to do it through a leather patch -- sew leather to canvas and put grommet through both. This helps against tearing in high winds.)

Next, position two of the corners on the opposite side of your sukkah at the top (get somebody to hold them in place for this step or tie them down), and spread the cover over the top until you reach your new poles. Mark the places on the cover where they meet the spikes, and set grommets there. (Feel free to give yourself some extra length if you want a bit of overhang at the lower side.) You should have a couple feet of cover yet on this side, enough to hang down past your s'schach.

Attach a rope to each corner, long enough to reach the ground from where the cover will sit, plus a foot or two. Quarter-inch rope is sufficient. Use actual rope (like hemp), not something that stretches like clothesline.

Position the cover over the sukkah, with the non-corner grommets going over the poles with the spikes. Once the cover is in place, put one of the blocks over each spike; this will protect your cover from the spikes when you fold it back.

If you are setting your sukkah up on grass, pound a tent-stake near each corner, make a loop in each rope with a slider-knot (err, I wasn't a scout, sorry -- a knot that you can slide along the rope to lengthen or shorten it), put the rope loops through the stakes, and tighten. To pull the cover back, loosen the ropes on the short side, remove from the stakes, and walk the cover back, guiding it with the ropes, until you've pulled the cover back over the tall side. It will hang down the outside.

If you are setting your sukkah up on pavement, you'll need something on the sukkah itself to attach the ropes to. Assuming your sukkah has a "baseboard" (something that sits on the ground to which the uprights are attached), you can tie a loop of rope around it at each corner with a very small amount of "give". If you don't have a "baseboard" you'll need to rig something on your corner posts. Once you have something on the frame to attach to, either tie off your ropes like above (threading through those ropes instead of tent stakes) or attach a trigger-snap hook to each rope. I highly recommend that you use the hooks for the ropes on the short side, as you'll be fastening and unfastening them a lot (assuming you're keeping your sukkah covered when not in use).

Here is a low-fidelity side view:

This won't keep 100% of the water out, because there's space on the sides between the s'chach and the cover, but it will keep most out.

Answer 3

This plan was originally made for a sukka where the schach mat was just a little too short for the frame.

1. Take a heavy-duty tarp about the size of your sukka and a length of PVC pipe about 2 feet longer than the width of the passul spot on the end of your sukka
2. Lay the tarp flat on the ground and place the PVC pipe so that it sticks out on both sides (fold the tarp if necessary)
3. Roll the tarp up around the pipe (think a roll of paper towels) and tie with a couple pieces of string so it stays in one piece.
4. Put your schlock roll in the passul spot. (If you don't have a passul spot, just put it on the schach.
5. Cut the string.

Pros: super simple
Cons: difficult to roll the schlock back up for reuse.
If I had to do it over: Punch holes in the pipe and tie the tarp to it.

Answer 4

I built a Shlock this year for a Succah on a deck measuring 8x18 feet that worked perfectly. It was corrugated plastic roofing on a 2x2 frame on wheels that slid on a track made of aluminum studs (cost about $3.00 each at Home Depot. It can be opened and closed by one person inside the Succah. Please contact me if you would like more details. [email protected] Total cost was approx. $200- the most expensive item was the roofing which was $14 per panel 8footx26 inches. I needed 10.

Answer 5

New idea for this year! I'm hoping to build it and would like to hear suggestions. Rules:

1. Needs to be simple, inexpensive, and (important) easy to put up and take down.
2. Needs to work on my sukkah, which is moderately large (10'x12').

Here's the idea: A single tarp, which can be in two positions. (a) at a pretty sharp angle over the sukkah, touching the sukkah on one end, high above it on the other [ / but not that steep], or (b) hanging vertically down the back of the sukkah [ | ].
Because it's at a sharp angle in (a), water won't be able to pool on it. But that requires a pretty hefty angle, say five feet up over a twelve foot sukkah.
So that's a diagonal hypotenuse of 12' and 5', length of 13'. If the sukkah is eight feet high, it can hang from the top to the bottom (8' + 5') in position (b).

Okay, how do we move it from (a) to (b) and back? So we have two ropes, one on each side, that go through eye hooks on the two ends, two at the top side of the sukkah, two at the low ends. We're going to pull the ropes to move the tarp.
How is the tarp attached to the ropes, and won't those attachments bump into the eye hooks? It is attached just in the four corners, nowhere in between. And (here's the trick) in position (a) the top of the tarp starts just past the top where it makes the turn to go down the back. When you pull the ropes to move it to (b), it reaches the bottom just before the former low side reaches the turn. So in position (a) the top side is just past the high eye hooks, and in position (b) the former low side is short of the high eye hooks. The attached corners never bump into them.
When the ropes are taut, the tarp should be fairly taut as well. We don't need it to be super-taut, because we gave it all that extra height.

For a frame, all we need on the low side is a couple of pieces of wood attached horizontally to the sukkah frame, to hold the eye hooks.
On the high side we're going to need a wood frame that goes five feet or so above the sukkah itself, attached to the sukkah corners. And maybe a horizontal roller across that helps the tarp make that pretty sharp turn up from the diagonal and down the back.

I'm not quite sure how to handle the ropes, suggestions? I'd like to be able to join them at the top or bottom, so that they can both be pulled at once, but so that when pulled the tension is correctly along the sides of the tarp, not toward the center where the ropes come together. (Otherwise I need a way to keep the tarp from bunching toward the center.) So something like, the ropes go straight to the ground, not to the center, then each gets turned there on more eye hooks or something to bring them together there, and that's where you pull them. Or just attach the ropes to the ends of a pole, and you pull it from nearer the center?

As for setup, it seem to me that the entire high side can be stood up next to the sukkah with the tarp attached already in position (b), then the vertical woods are lashed to the sukkah corners. Then the tarp and ropes are pulled along the sukkah to the other end (position (a)) so that the ropes can be put through the low eye hooks. No ladder needed, which is important because I don't have or want a 13' ladder.

Please advise if you have ideas. I'm very excited that I might finally be able to make this work. I hope to post diagrams when I have them.

Additional question: Are there steps that can be take that would help protect this from being a "flying wing" in the wind? Would additional immovable tarps hanging down the sides and back help?

-- Update: Getting close to being able to build it. A couple of modifications that I think make sense:

1. Put a cross-bar at the high and low sides of the tarp, lashed through grommets in the tarp at several places. a) helps to keep tarp wide, b) now we can use just one rope at each end to pull it, attached to the middle of the cross-bar, the lashings should help to spread the load. Cross-bar could be a 2x2, or a thin PVC pipe.
2. To help the tarp make the turn at the top, I'm thinking a thicker (3"?) PVC pipe across the upper turn, hanging from a rope that passes through it and made taut to the 2x4s on the two sides. That's pretty simple, and the PVC pipe can rotate freely to help the tarp move.
3. I don't really want the height of the shlock to be locked in to the size of the sukkah, in my case (see above calculations) 5 extra feet up from the sukkah to make the diagonal match the 13' vertical drop. I'm guessing maybe 3 or 4' up would be enough slope, (and then I could use a standard 2x4x12' for the supports, don't need to get it made especially long, and it would be less top-heavy for wind issues.) But now the shlock is going to reach the ground in the Off position leaving a couple of feet still up over the sukkah: the vertical drop is not long enough to match the diagonal of the On position. How do you help it finish the rest of the journey? So I'm thinking that I put another PVC near the ground, hanging on another rope like the high one. Now the shlock rope pulls it Off to the ground, then we bring it under the lower PVC and pull it back up, a couple of feet further, and secure it there.
   Suggestions?

Answer 6

Follow-up on R' Aaron Tendler's answer. I contacted him and got some pictures (there are six but I can only post a single link to the folder containing them), and a description [https://photos.google.com/share/AF1QipO-Rydlqf15LKdUu2600SUfR10dOnlHmzH4ThqvBVl4LuEeLmJZQjFSwetmruRvug?key=bUxKaTFGZTNyVWlsRUpaczlhTHc1a3I4MGE1Y3pB ] [I thought the fourth picture was confusing, but that's just because someone else's sukkah is in the background; ignore it.] M Reach

Here's his description (in three separate emails, so you'll have to figure out which picture he refers to in each):

The Shlock is off the Succah, so the Succah is ready for use. Please note the 20' length of 1x2 going the width of the frame in the middle, supporting the panels in the middle from sagging. I did not fasten it in past years, but it can be fastened with a single wood screw or bracket on either end- I intend to do so this year. The ropes at the corners are for tying down the Shlock in extreme weather after it has been rolled back onto the Succah. The end is attached to the poles holding my balcony.

OK- here are 3 pictures that I asked someone to snap with their phone. At this point, only the frame of the Shlock is up and in its track. I laid one panel of the plastic corrugated roofing across the frame, so that you can see how it will lay when I'm finished connecting it. I am going to put up the Succah itself after the Shlock is up, as the way I did it it is independent of the Succah, supported by the 2x4 upright poles (back ones are slightly higher than the front ones.) If your Succah is sturdy enough, you can rest the track for the Shlock directly on the walls, although you will need to figure out a way to elevate one side so that the rain will drain off. My porch is 7'7"x18'6", and I made the Shlock to cover an area of 8'x20'. The roofing does come in 12' lengths as well. (I believe each sheet is 26 inches wide- definitely the most expensive part of the whole project!) In the second picture, you can see the top part of the wheels attached to the 2x2 supporting the roofing. The bottom part is inside the track, which is screwed to the 2x4. In the third picture the roofing is laying across the frame. After the roofing is attached to the frame, I will be running 2 1"x2" (across the 20' length) poles under the roofing, to prevent the roofing from sagging. How did I manage to create a 20' long 2x2 pole to support the roofing? That took a while to figure out. In Home Depot they sell steel 8' lengths of garage door track. I took 2 of the and fitted them together, creating one 8' tube, and inserted 8' lengths of 2x2's into each end, with 6' extending on either side, and put a bolt on both ends to fasten the wood into place. You can attach ropes and use pulleys to move it back and forth. In my case, I just use a pole with a hook on it that attaches to an "eye" bolt on the front 20' pole, and I just roll the Shlock back and forth. My Schach placement allows me to leave a 2" "groove" that allows this. I cannot emphasize enough the importance of the wood being PERFECTLY straight when you are selecting it!! Otherwise, it will not roll if there is any warping at all. This does not apply to the 2x2 longer ( in my case 20') pole, which just supports the roofing. Hatzlacha! Aaron Tendler

Ooops...forgot to mention that before putting up the tracks you need to put a small metal bracket or screw protruding at the end, to prevent the frame from rolling off the wrong end if you push it too far!

ADDENUM: fixed url link

EDITED to add from different answer:

Addendum from R' Aaron Tendler:

Just realized that there is another important piece of information that should be included. If you look at the frame holding the panels, you will notice that the corners are connected by putting the 20' length over the side 2x2 with the wheels, with a single long bolt going through both. That bolt must be extremely tight (use a pliers even if you use wing nuts like I did) to hold the frame rigid.

Two important advantages of attaching the corner this way-

1. It is much easier to take apart after Succos :-)

2. You now have a 2" space between the Shlock plastic panels and the 2x2 the wheels are on. Because the panels will inevitably sag, you can run the 1x2 (that I've been mentioning over and over again) from one side all the way to the other beneath the panels, with the 2" side sticking up. I would even run 2 of them. This will hold the panels rigid with no sag at all, and the rain will run right off. Obviously, to get 20' I need to attach two of them together.