I had the pitch way too high in that video, lowered it to 3 and found tons of tiny tiny gold.
I am talking GPH per inch of sluice width. The wider your sluice is per the same amount of water flow, the shallower and slower the water runs. It is a crossover calculation from my experience building waterfalls and streams for ponds. It is used to make sure that the stones that you place are not going to get washed out of your waterfall or stream and down into your pond. Also to make sure that you get the visual effects that you are looking for.
Take the Raptor Flare 2.0. 9 inch main sluice deep strong flow. Then you flare and flatten it out to 14 inches, the same amount of water is flowing over 64 percent wider matting. Pump head pressure aside, say it's a 5000 GPH pump running the Highbanker. You have 555 Gallons flowing over every inch of width per hour in the 9 inch wide section. Once that water gets down to the 14 inch wide section, each inch of sluice width has 357 gallons flowing over it per hour. That translates to slower, shallower water with lower pressure at the same pitch. These are physical "constants" that I can tweak my setup from. No matter the angle of the sluice, you will always have the same amount of water traveling over it, the pitch just determines the depth, speed and turbulence of that water.
If you increase your pitch, that same 555 or 357 Gallons per hour will flow faster and shallower raising the speed, pressure and turbulence. Lower the pitch and the opposite happens. BUT no matter the pitch, the actual gallons per hour flowing over the sluice is the same.
I am using Gallons per inch ONLY as a measure of pump size to sluice width.
I apologize if I am not able to explain it in a way that makes sense to anyone.
Anyone can tell you that 10,000 GPH is too much for a 10 inch sluice. But why is this true? Because it blows everything out. But why does it blow everything out? Because there is 1,000 gallons of water flowing over every inch of width of the sluice ever hour.
All I did was put a number to what everyone already knows, that's all.
Gallons per Hour / Width of sluice = Gallons per inch of sluice width
Apply this to your equipment, it's kinda cool. At least to me, the new guy
Yes I am new to prospecting, but have tons of experience with water flow, head pressure, flow rates, blah blah blah. Been working with ponds and waterfalls for years.
