My passion this week is building a better little house in the backyard.
Each year around this time, for the past 40 years, I have built a variety of temporary little houses in the backyard. The houses, or sukkahs, were built to commemorate the 40-year wanderings of the Israelites in the desert.
It is with some excitement that in this, my 40th year of my sukkah building, I appear to have created the best sukkah of all.
I remember early sukkahs I constructed from 2×4 pieces of wood. They were heavy. They took quite awhile to put together. Several years ago I discovered the ease of building with PVC pipes.
In such early constructions I glued the pipes together with PVC glue.
It was a hassle to create and de-construct these edifices following the week of the sukkah holiday. For 50 weeks of the year for the past several years, my rather awkward, large sections of PVC, with canvas walls attached, were stored against the side of my house.
So what is new this year? I have finally developed a system that I can use for my remaining years. It’s really very simple.
I removed the dirty canvas coverings, and sawed apart sections of last year’s PVC sukkah. What I created were four, almost identical framed sections of PVC, and another frame that is slightly wider. Each frame is comprised of vertical pieces, the height of my canvas walls, which are glued to two horizontal pieces. The frames are attached to each other with zip ties.
Three of the frames run in the same direction, forming the “outside wall” of the sukkah. Two of the attached frames run perpendicular to the three, and form the walls that approach the house. The “inside wall” of the sukkah is simply the exterior of my house. Equally spaced aluminum poles are zip-tied on top of the sukkah.
Rolls of bamboo are unrolled atop the aluminum poles and form the roof. For the sukkah’s walls, canvas sheets are attached at their grommets to the PVC frames by zip ties.
How simple it will be to deconstruct my sukkah by snipping all the zip ties, and then carrying each PVC frame to the side of the house. The canvas sheets can be folded and stored.
What can I improve upon next year? How about air conditioning in the sukkah?
Mr. Ebsen may be contacted at robertebsen51@gmail.com