I'm confused. Skimmers suck air all the time (maybe that's inaccurate, but they are open channels too), it's kinda by default since they're open channels of water. If the input of water into the skimmer does not exceed the channel's ability to take that water in then how is it not behaving like an overflow channel?
Have you taken this premise and attempted to adapt it to running a BeanAnimal style set of pipes? I'm not saying that you're wrong (and you admit that you don't know if it would work), but there seems to be a lot of off-handed neigh saying about this system's ability to handle water flow (from the other thread). I'm also not saying that I'm right, since I have no idea if it really will work also. I am however willing to experiment and see if it can work. And I think it can with a little (or a lot) of tweaking/modification. And the tweak I've made to make it at least look like a BA is to introduce a "trap" which could/would simulate the pipe being completely submerged all the time so long as the water level never drops below the bottom of the "U".
From what I understand of the BA system. There are 3 drains involved. 2 which are effectively siphon/durso pipes and an emergency overflow in the event that the two primary drains fail. Of the two down-turned pipes, one is adjusted to maintain a water level high enough to prevent air from being introduced into that siphon's piping. The other down-turned pipe is a low-flow wide open piping scheme which handles the excess flow which is generated by tuning the full siphon to maintain the aforementioned water level.
SO! I hypothesize, based on this information, that it is possible to utilize a BA method on the above illustrated system IF it is possible for two things to happen.
1) Water level can be maintained at an arbitrary level high enough to keep the bottom of the Skimmer pipe wet with 1/16" of water. This is just a number, could be any number as long as the water level in the initial overflow piping is high enough that water can flow freely to either side to drain.
2) The skimmer pipe does not become completely submerged in water.
The solution to the skimmer pipe getting submerged is a simple matter of either opening the ball valve wider to allow more flow OR making the groove/notch in the skimmer pipe wider which will provide more room for water to fall in without meeting itself in the middle. The latter solution will only work to a point where the pipe is cut in half at which point bigger pipe will be needed to get more surface area to work with.
Based on what I've said, does this at least sound like a logical/reasonable conclusion to arrive at given the two conditions which need to be met and is my understanding on how the BA system works accurate?
