300' water pipe down to the river

[winners58]

The New Chinese miners I mean New49'ers getting it done
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Arial view of the whole system
https://youtu.be/RWR1Q46eY48

 

[ARC]

300 foot waterpipe...

Sheesh how the heck do you inhale all that smoke ?

:P

 

[mytimetoshine]

That seems like a heck of a lot of work to run a small highbanker. So I'm guessing your not allowed to pump water from the river, but this is perfectly acceptable lol

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[bcfromfl]

That seems like a heck of a lot of work to run a small highbanker. So I'm guessing your not allowed to pump water from the river, but this is perfectly acceptable lol

Later on in the season when the Klamath settles down a bit more, they have plans to hook the pipe up to a dredge. They need the pressure for the lift and to power the sluicebox. They were successful in operating a dredge last season with this system before they had to pack it up for the winter. If I understand correctly, they're going to split the pipe to run the highbanker AND the dredge together.

 

[mytimetoshine]

Now if they got a huge gravity dredge going now that would be epic

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[bcfromfl]

Now if they got a huge gravity dredge going now that would be epic

They were successful in getting a 5-inch "underwater suction device" running last season:

 

[mytimetoshine]

heck yes!!!

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[Duckshot]

That's high high banking.

Speaking of pipe, someday l wana see if 100' pipe up stream would generate enough volume and velocity to run a small highbanker downstream. Big Brother says no pumps allowed here. Not a lot of gold and can't dig in the banks anyways.

 

[bcfromfl]

Speaking of pipe, someday l wana see if 100' pipe up stream would generate enough volume and velocity to run a small highbanker downstream. Big Brother says no pumps allowed here. Not a lot of gold and can't dig in the banks anyways.

The only way you can do it reliably is by necking down your pipe. You need the weight of the water in the upper-end of the pipe to create the pressure out the bottom end. There are folks here who can calculate the pressure created per foot drop over a length of pipe, but I'm the kinda guy who does things the hard way, experimenting! The more length of the pipe you can devote to a larger diameter, the better. Say, start with 8", then down to 6", 4" and 2". If it's a shallow river, 100 feet may not be enough.

Here's a video of a guy doing something similar to what you propose, using about 400 feet of 1" hose, up a creek that has enough drop to *almost* run his trommel/highbanker setup:

 

[ratled]

It's not the size of the hose or the length of the hose but the height the water has to "drop" to create pressure. A good field rule of thumb is you get 5 psi for every 10'. This is true if you go down or up. So if you have a 100' hose but there is only 10' of elevation drop you only get 5 psi. If you have a 1,000' of hose and only have 10' of elevation difference you still only have 5 psi.

Hose length does affect it in a negative way as there is friction as the water goes through the hose. The longer the hose the worse it gets. Also as you get into high pressures the friction rate goes up too. The type of hose also affects this

For a typical highbanker 10 -15 psi will work. You will also need a significant volume of water (gpms).

Pressure is affected by height the water falls and volume is affected by the size of the hose (as well as some by pressure).

For gravity fed systems hard hose (ie pressure hose) is want you want as lay flat needs additional pressure to keep it "open"

This is over simplified and is just an overview.

ratled

 

[bcfromfl]

Here's another video of a fellow running a highbanker on the Klamath. It's not too clear whether he's got piped water spraying in the crash box, or if the sluice is running off of mostly river flow. But he's using the "big-pipe-to-little-pipe" principle, with next to zero drop:

 

[IMAUDIGGER]

Must have riparian water rights, otherwise some gov. agency would consider that in violation of some permit.
State says it owns the surface water.