System to roll up outdoor blinds that came without cords

Question

I got some outdoor blinds to shade my balcony, specifically these. They apparently no longer sell the kind with a cord system to roll them up, instead they have these obnoxious little clips. I belatedly realized that I installed the shades so high up that I need a stepladder to roll them up or down, which is obviously annoying.

I'd like to build some sort of cord system to do this. I'm vaguely thinking of adding pulleys on the hooks that are already supporting the blinds, and wrapping cord around the bottom bar. That seems like it might work well enough, but still be a bit awkward and impractical. Is there a better solution for this, or something already designed out?

Answer 1

Would need three pulleys, a short and long cord and a hook/boat thingy/holder to hold the cord.

Attach the long cord to the short cord before pulley B. Pulley A will be at the far end of the blinds, so long cord goes to the bottom. Pulley B is at the near end, and pulley C is on the wall, so the cord will go down to the cord holder.

It is bad I know, but hope you can make sense of it. I will not give up my day job to become an artist.

Answer 2

I actually did build the accepted answer, I am just posting this so I can add some color and notes. But it's the same basic design.

I used 1/8" braided nylon cord, largely because I already had some and there was enough handy at the hardware store. Also the white color blends into the sky a bit better, though it stands out against the blinds. It certainly overkill for the application, as the strength of a single strand is more than the entire weight of the blind.

Where the diagram specifies "pulleys", I opted to use simple steel rings. They're about a quarter the price, and also make it easy to run multiple cords through them in slightly different directions, which is handy since the blinds actually use three hangers and hence I used three cords.

I didn't feel like measuring out and cords to cut them (though it ends up being about 20-24' each, depending which end of the blind you're connecting to), and the blinds were already hung and kind of a PITA to take down, so I ran the cord through "in reverse" and then tied them to the anchors behind the blind. This was a little ticklish, since I don't have easy access to the back, but worked OK.

Using a cleat to tie up the ropes would be ideal, but it's also a pain for me to add hardware in this spot. I do have a balcony railing handy though, so I used that for now.

I've tried a few wraps around the railing and then a slip knot carabinered to the line to keep it from coming out.

And also a mule hitch with an overhand backup.

Both work reasonably well, though it may be a little more rope work than your average person would want to do just to roll up the blinds. I may do something better at some point.

I also found that the stupid thing flops around in the breeze a lot, which I should've expected. I've temporarily addressed that by creating cord loops around the railing uprights (actually old shoelace tied with a double fisherman's) and using the stupid clips supplied with the blind to attach the bottom of the blind to them. This seems to work better than I expected, and is certainly good enough for now.