<p>I am thinking of buying a Sunsetter awning for our back deck. The deck faces south, and the sun makes the deck almost unusable until 3pm. Also the sun pours in the sliding door, unless I pull the curtain which makes the kitchen dark and depressing.</p>
<p>DH does not want to pay for an awning because the plan is to eventually turn the back deck into a screen porch; however due to college tuition bills that plan is at least 6 years away. For 3 years we have put a “portable canopy” on the deck, which helped and is cheap, but yesterday we forgot to take the canopy down before the storm and now it’s a mangled/tangled mess of metal. That’s the second time that’s happened, I’m getting tired of buying canopies! </p>
<p>Anyone have any experience with these awnings, good or bad? I thought I’d get the one that cranks by hand; IMHO a motorized one is more likely to break or have a problem.</p>
<p>Hi Lafalum, we have had a big sunsetter on our back deck for almost 10 years now. It is a pretty big one, I think it’s the 14 foot model. Our deck faces due WEST so that in the afternoon the sun would shine through the sliding glass doors and turn the kitchen/dining area into an OVEN, unless we closed the blinds, and like you say, it makes it dark and depressing.</p>
<p>We absolutely love it. Installed it ourselves (well, DH did, anyway). Have had no problems with it in 10 years. It is easy to put up and down…takes about 2 minutes. It’s heavy but not so heavy that it is too hard for me to do. We are careful to roll it back down when it’s windy or if t-storms are in the forecast. Since it is manually put up and down, we often adjust the ‘pitch’ of the awning to account for the position of the sun in the sky (when the sun gets lower in the sky, we can pitch it down get more shade).</p>
<p>Any other questions ask!</p>