Bazooka Recirculating setup questions

[OhioKeith]

Hi all!
First I wanted to say Thank You to all the Great people on here that have offered so much advice and help in the countless other threads I have been reading and learning from for months now.

I have a couple of questions on setting up a 30" Bazooka Prospector to be recirculating. I have been using my Buckabilly 30" sluice for my recirculating for awhile now and have gotten it fine tuned pretty well with minimal losses. I want to use the fluid bed of the Bazooka, either by itself or in combo with the sluice, to run through stockpile of sands.
1. I have built a 3 pipe connection to the Bazooka, but the fit is not tight enough and water fills up bottom of Bazooka after a few minutes. I am using 3/4' piping to go over the Bazooka's pipes, but there is a slight difference causing the leaking. Any ideas?
2. Another issue I have is that in the fluid bed, the pipe farthest from the water input gets almost all the pressure, the middle gets some spray, and closest to water input has almost no spray. Tubes are clear of blockages. I have the input water coming from right side going into T fittings to the pipes to the tubes. Running currently with my old 750gph bilge pump I use for my other recirculating setup. Any advice?

Thank you,
Keith

 

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[GoldpannerDave]

First off, I would say that you do not have enough water. I have a 48" Miner and a 30" Sniper but not the Prospector. Still, I know you need more water. I would use two pumps, one for the bed and the other for washing material down the slick plate, over the grizzly and off the end of the sluice. If the fluid bed is not fluidized, eventually new gold ends up washing out. You don't want to use too much water either, because you can blow everything out of the trap.

Another thread here says for the Prospector you need at least 150 gpm; your pump is a bit over 12 gpm.

http://www.treasurenet.com/forums/sluicing/461309-mock-up-highbanker-kit-my-bazooka-prosector-i-hope-works.html

 

[OhioKeith]

I was planning a second pump for the slick plate. The 750gph was just for the tubes. I was testing out the tube setup first for being able to fluidize evenly and correctly before worrying about the top. most of my stockpiled sand is already classified to 8 mesh or 20 mesh. Just wanted to pull every last bit of the tiny flour Ohio gold out of it and I love the way the Bazooka works in the creek(when can get enough water pressure). Also wanted a way to be able to do some mining when rivers are flooded and raining all the time....lol Gotta get my fix for the fever. lol

 

[KevinInColorado]

Instead of 3/4 inch PVC you need to use 1/2 inch with a coupling on the end. The stock tubes are 1/2 inch and the coupling will press on nice and tight...no leaking unless your water pressure is way too high. If you are getting more flow thru the first tube, valves might help. However your situation puzzles me because with sufficient water flow all three tubes should pressure equalize since they all have similar holes patterns and therefore flow/restriction. It suggests your pump is not even producing enough water for the fluid bed.

 

[OhioKeith]

Good idea Kevin! I totally forgot about coupling and was just using the 3/4" I had laying around. I might have to rethink the input though. It could be I have burned up the pump some from all the recirculating, and it is at least 10 years old...lol I will try again tonight if I have the parts.

 

[Goldwasher]

100 gpm minimum!!!!! your at 12.5 or less considering head pressure. A 36 is gonna be like 150 gpm. 750 gph runs a blue bowl a bazooka needs a lot more volume than a blue bowl.

 

[OhioKeith]

Ok an update here. I only planned to use the 750gph for the tubes only, not slick plate, and only for recirculating. I took Kevin's advice and changed the piping to 1/2" with coupler and it worked Great! No more leaks and better pressure in tubes. I hooked up my submersible pump instead for more power to the tube setup and it works Great! More pressure on center tube than sides, but now all get spray going. I tested it all tonight stacking my sluice with deep V matting installed on top of Bazooka so that it empties into grizzlies and fluid bed chamber. Most everything I'm running had already been classified to -8 mesh. The whole setup worked wonderful with some fine tuning. Bed was very fluidized, even had to dial back some to prevent blowout. The main reason I was doing this setup is so I didn't have to sluice the same sand multiple times to get all the gold out of it. Plus then I can see some gold in the matting...(instant gratification to motivate...lol) I will have to pan out each area to see how it did and I will give update. The sand I am running has been gone through before when I first started learning panning, so of course I have been finding some that was missed...lol. If it ever quits raining here I can get some fresh dirt to run, rivers too flooded for most part the last 2 weeks.
I will look into getting bigger better pumps sometime soon!
Thank you Guys for your ideas and support! I'm a happy camper tonight getting things working!