Haha
fish4gold3, farmer was just having a bit of fun with his "elevated sluice" and its hose for washing his hands and having a drink
Sluice, single layer unit, fed by the flow of the creek/river you are in, in general it pays to classify the material you put in it and feed it slowly by hand with a trowel etc. there are obviously some designs and matting/riffle/mesh preferences that can take more material than others and can be fed by shovel/bucket without needing to classify as much. There are tons of designs out there I just picked one that was unbranded to not be biased in any way. These are still thankfully legal, because the powers that be can't pin mechanical advantage on them as of yet! You can put a header box on the front of a sluice and make it a powered unit, unfortunately, that now is a no no as it qualify's it as a highbanker. Mechanical pump for water is their issue, it not really about pumping water, it's about mechanical advantage.
Highbanker, sluice plus the hopper to feed it, punch plate or grizzly bars do the classification for you, you can feed them faster and harder than a river sluice. Fed water by a pump, be it petrol water pump or battery bilge pump (and that there is our problem....mechanical advantage) The hopper where you bucket or shovel raw material into has a water destruction chamber to bust up clays and gravels, wash off all the colours that keep us up at night.
You could hand pump water to a highbanker, or use some kind of gravity feed, but it's just not viable, they really do rely on water flow and most...not all depending on mat type do not like stop/starts when it comes to water as once the fluid bed stops and material settles, you will be blowing gold out the back end unless you do a clean up every time you lose water pressure. I have seen a gravity fed trommel on youtube, something like 400 ft of pipe, but even then it was bloody horrible, it was not much more than a trickle, and some of these mats really do like water flow.
Grab yourself a river sluice or go knock one up in the shed! there are plenty of designs in the DIY section, most materials you can get hold of easy enough, you can pretty much build a sluice from Bunnings, although I don't think they stock sheet aluminum? Being new to the game, maybe not the best time to go drop $1000 on a banker setup and go getting a $750? fine plus having your gear confiscated on your first trip out, when you are going to need 20 grams of the good stuff in your hands before even covering your initial setup.
If you are stubborn like me and choose to risk taking out the highbanker, be careful but also be prepared to risk the fine in the next few months as they will be on a mission targeting known hotspots like crazy.
vs
