Love these homemade recirculating sluices

[Nuggetbrain]

Watching the youtube videos of folks who have made their own recirculation sluices (I hope that's the right wording) are great!

The pumps most folks use, are they basically pumps for backyard fountains that you might find at a home supply store?

Are the hoses a standard size? Can you use a garden hose?

Sorry for these probably obvious questions but I have pretty much zero knowledge of do it yourselfing!

But man do I want to learn!

Thanks.

Tim

 

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[ezrider2]

Watching the youtube videos of folks who have made their own recirculation sluices (I hope that's the right wording) are great!

The pumps most folks use, are they basically pumps for backyard fountains that you might find at a home supply store?

Are the hoses a standard size? Can you use a garden hose?

Sorry for these probably obvious questions but I have pretty much zero knowledge of do it yourselfing!

But man do I want to learn!

Thanks.

Tim

Use a bilge pump ( like they use for a boat). They are either 3/4" or 1 1/8" and run on DC power. You can convert it to a garden hose fitting very easily!
Good luck
EZ

 

[Nuggetbrain]

Ok so a bilge pump only has one connection for a hose, correct? The pump sits in the water and sucks the water in, then pumps it through the hose?

Thanks.

Tim

 

[ezrider2]

Ok so a bilge pump only has one connection for a hose, correct? The pump sits in the water and sucks the water in, then pumps it through the hose?

Thanks.

Tim

You got it or it will hang in your bucket or whatever you are using.

 

[Nuggetbrain]

Ok.... next questions... do these bilge pumps come with some sort of filter? I would think that they would get clogged up with the dirt that is washing out of
your sluice into your water tub. Also, can you plug these in or do you hook up a battery to them?

If not a bilge pump, are there other pumps that would work? Something you could plug into a socket and would set on the ground, with two hoses, one from your water tub to the pump, then from the pump to the top of your sluice, and over and over and over....

Many thanks.

Tim

 

[Maitland]

I'm no expert on recirculating sluices, but I'm sure you probably noticed my thread in this forum about building one. I'm re-doing mine for the second time right now after I made a stupid, brainless mistake on positioning the PVC. To answer your questions to the best of my ability and knowledge: I am using a sewage pump from Harbor Freight with mine. It does not have a filter, but I will have 10-gallon paint filters at each in-flow end of PVC going from one tub to another, I also plan on putting the pump in a bucket drilled with holes and putting a paint filter over that as well. Keeping silt away as much as possible will prolong the life of any pump. I'm using some 1.5" braided hose of some sort for mine (I'm not very knowledgeable with anything plumbing-related so I don't know what it's called, technically). I don't know much about bilge pumps so I'm going to refrain from trying to answer any of your questions about them, someone else around here will know though.

 

[Capt Nemo]

I have a plexiglass 3" cleanout sluice that runs a 180GPH fountain pump, and uses a mat made from cheap car matting. In operation it has 1/4" of water depth over the mat, and runs best at about 8 - 10 degrees. Have found no gold in tailings or second run material. It has captured down to #400 in heavy black beach sands. The new mat I made for it has a PVC pond liner backing and extends past the mat 1". I also started using magnets to capture the magnetite (have a buyer), and use Lenz Law (counter electromotive force) to capture any gold in suspension.

 

[kayakpat]

nice, I still need to get somewhere to try my gold cube with my home made classifier/ spray topper and run by solar power and recyclicable water and take pictures. just dirt around here no gold