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My Tank Thread
Interesting, I would like to hear more about those situations. There is the cup drain for the skimmate that drains to an external container/drain and a second cup drain higher up to handle an overflow that drains back into the bowl. What went wrong and what did you do to prevent future issues?
I do see the risk with an open drain that could significantly drain a large portion of water before it was detected (without a monitoring device in place to shut things down). And that same water ends up on the floor without some detection monitor in place as well. I was also thinking about putting the skimmer in a shallow pan with a drain in the bottom in case the overflow design fails and spills over the top of the skimmer and down the sides. I plan to use floats and leak detectors with my Apex to "water proof" my home as much as possible. I have seen a lot of creative ideas.
The cup drain is indeed to connect the cup to a drain or better and safer yet a container with a float valve to turn off the skimmer when full. the internal higher drain handles overflows and lets water drain back into the air tube which kills skimming and prevents the overflow from going on past a full cup. if your lower drain is opened water continues to drain out and level doesn't drain enough so thant the anti overflow (upper drain) receives water to kill skimming. which is what happened in my case: drain open and water continued to overflow till I saw it. what I did is a made sure to close the drain hose after each use. I only had a couple of incidents in over a year and the internal anti overflow handled those great.