2007 Update

The new sukkah is up! The whole process took two days, today (Wednesday) and two days ago (Monday).

I had some new insights this year.

The initial build process is stressful. Tying the sticks together takes about three hours. It should be done in one "sitting," since if you leave off in the middle, it will take about 20 minutes the next day to reorient yourself to where you left off. It should probably be done alone, though kids like to tie some ties, and probably can't cause too much trouble by tying a few.

It helps to have extra (spare) struts. I stupidly got rid of all of the extra bamboo sticks from last year, so I had no way to make extras. I should have made about ten extras of each type of strut.

The reason for this is that the build process inevitably breaks struts. They are somewhat fragile, and the rings pop out of the sticks when stressed. You can repair them with a little Gorilla Glue (gloves!), but it's a lot easier if you have extra struts available.

It helps to have grown-ups helping to hold up parts of the structure while you are adding struts. This helps you orient locations for new struts as you build. I suppose it's less critical to hold up the structure if you have a very good spatial 3d sense, but I don't. It's not critical to hold up the dome during the building phase, and may actually damage struts with abnormal pressures, so I say if it wants to fall, let it. As long as you understand what section you're building, save the loft part for the tightening phase.

Once the entire framework is built, it will look terrible, you will feel terrible, and the kids will be despondent. This is ok. Don't despair. The dome doesn't magically loft itself. You have to tighten it.

If you did your job right, the struts will be very loose. You did that to minimize ring poppage while assembling. Now that the assembly is built, go around tightening the ties around the dome. Like the assembly process, start at the bottom and work your way up. Push the dome up from the inside, and evaluate not that joint, but the ones it's attached to. Tighten the loose joints, and repeat. Try to avoid any stressful movements--you will get a feel for how the dome likes to be pushed, and how it complains.

The dome has a mind of its own. Pushing or tightening a joint in one location can have a profound impact on another unrelated location. It's like the butterfly wing flap causing a tsunami--very new-agey! Contemplate the sound of one hand clapping.

The finishing process is an iterative process: push on the loosest joint, the one that buckles down all the time, tighten its neighbors, then tighten that joint. Each joint has two conformations: in (drooping) and out (lofted). The goal is to tie the joint in such a way that the lofted conformation is the lowest-energy condition. The dome wants to loft, but you just have to give it a little encouragement. You have to care about the dome. See a loose joint? Tighten it. Sometimes you have to cut a tie to move a ring to a better location in a joint. Sometimes you have to tie and retie a joint. I have some joints with five or six cable ties holding them together. Pretty ugly, but they are tight. Little by little, you realize the structure is more solid, sags less, feels sturdier. Small sags can lead to big instability until even the small sags are gone. You can spend 30 minutes just fine-tuning small sags.

It helps to have a (low-key) friend help with the tightening process. You want someone who will hold up one section while you tighten another section. As you tighten more and more, he will have to hold less and less.

Remember, if the joint starts out really tight, the rings will pop when you move the struts. You'll have to move struts around to add new sections, but try not to move the dome too much, and use people, ladders, etc. to support sagging structures. If you leave a lot of sag for overnight, expect broken rings in the morning.

The build process took about five hours total this year. I broke about six sticks, four the first day and two the second day. The dome is now holding with two struts missing. One strut I jury-rigged out of cable ties connecting two joints, and the other I just left off. These are the very last two struts, so if any of the bamboo breaks, I have no more dome. I worry about next year, though maybe we'd be better off with a metal dome!

Next year, I will probably start before Yom Kippur. The key is to allow enough time. It's stressful, because when the struts are loose you wonder how that thing is ever going to stand up, and you don't know whether to invite people over if your dome is more like a carpet.