500 $ Mini highbanker options

[mshanygin]

I am curious to see any ideas on small highbankers. I have a bazooka sniper 36" and am looking for the 500 dollar mini highbanker for the times the bazooka can't be run. My friend Echoplex just got one and I was impressed with how easy it is once you get it tuned in and set up right. I will probably get the same but wanted many opinions before that. Thoughts and ideas please.

 

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[mshanygin]

It lives!
View attachment 1166546
bazooka Sniper, a $35 1200gph pump, a handful of PVC plastic, an old, hand-me-down stand and an auto-rescue battery. Ran for about an hour and I can say it works decently well and catches gold. It takes more hands on rock clearing as ALL the water runs thru the trap, none over to top to clear the rocks. But it works!

So I finished my build just like Hamfist did.
I got myself a 35amp deep cycle battery that weighs 25lbs and a 1600 gph Johnson pump that runs at 7 amps. 35 devided by 7. I should be able to run about 5 hours with no stops.
I am having the same problem KevinColorado is having. Not enough water flow on the top end. I can't for the life of me find my 1000 gph pump that I have in the house somewhere. I am doing some spring cleaning today so I hope I stumble upon it. Since I couldn't find another pump to see what another 1000gph would do... I decided to buy a Johnson 2200 gph pump that runs at 7.5 amps. Cuts down on running time but not by much.
Tested the unit in the duck pond so far but didn't run any material through it. Later today I will take it down to the creek around the corner just for fun and to see how it performs with minimal waterflow on top. It might just work fine, but I still want a bigger pump.
I had another idea as I was building it. The next thing I want to do is use some of this xps foam that I used for insulation in my basement and cut out a perfect plug for the bazooka inlet. Cut out a hole and put in a fitting for a hose. Then cut out a space for overflow to go out onto top plate. What do you think?

 

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[mshanygin]

It does amazingly well with just the fluid bed working at 100 %.
I ran it at high pitch first to clear the rocks with the limited flow on the top. Did a cleanup and it got some bigger flakes. Later I did it at a lower pitch and it retained a lot more fines. After effing around for a couple of hours I finally just put the whole thing in the creek to get a few more shovels full. I let the pump do the fluid bed and let the creek do the top. That's when I finally thought of taking a pic. Thinking the other method (with the plug) will distribute the flow more evenly. It did surprisingly well. A lot better than I thought.

 

[KevinInColorado]

Interesting idea combining pump and stream flow...way to dominate the small creeks!

 

[mshanygin]

I tried it with and without the extra valve to the top and found it was restricting the flow more with than without. If I had enough gph it might make a difference. As is, it works better with as little extra tubing as possible. Let's see what no tubing does..

 

[mshanygin]

About 2 hours of testing.