Recirculating water for a highbanker

[Occasional_panner]

OK guys, as the title said , recirculating water for a highbanker, does anyone do this? If so how effective is dirty water vs clean water in regards to retention of gold? Clearly the filthyness of the water will come into it, but any feedback would be welcome.
Lets say if you went out for a day in the GT and worked some old creek beds, how many litres would you anticipate to need in a 5 hr dig, 100L 200L, 300L?
Lots of variables here, but just after a general idea.

 

[XIV]

Considering my pump runs at 230L a minute
Maybe 1000L for an hour or so.
Some of the small creeks will have running water this time of year
You are better off damming it up and use the water from that. At least when its full, you will have clean water running into it which will help clean out the muddy water.

 

[Occasional_panner]

Thanks XIV,
I was thinking of a big crate at the bottom of the banker, and recirculating that water, then scooping out sediments during the day and topping up with clean water.
Or is this idea completely fanciful and nonsense???
(edited for spelling)

 

[Occasional_panner]

Like this.

 

[bend]

The more clay the more water, although you can settle it out to a certain extent. If you use one tub as a settling pond and run into a second one that you're actually pumping from you might get away with a few hundred litres if the clay contents low and you're running a smaller banker.
You'd have to target a low volume, high grade deposit with minimal clay though, a setup like you're contemplating works alright for crevicing as an example but soon starts loosing gold if there's any significant amount of clay. The main warning sign is the water getting soupy and sometimes greasy feeling, by the time it gets to that point though you've already lost quite a bit in fines.
You're better off bringing in a puddling tub and then puddling and classifying on site without trying to extract values (attach a classifier directly to your puddling tub). A sufficiently large tub (150 litres or so) and few hundred litres of water recirculating through a second large tub lets you do that without worrying too much about loss. After that you're working with a much smaller volume and almost no clay and can run a power sluice with a few hundred litres of fresh water and a settling pond.
You will run into issues with your puddlers recirculating tub effectively filling up with clay though if you have a lot of it, and there's nothing to do but wait for it to settle out and clean it out when that happens.

 

[Occasional_panner]

Sounds like a too hard basket, unless onto a good target.

Thanks for the honest non-offensive factual replies, thank you.

 

[bend]

Pretty much, a 50 or 60 litre tub and a hundred or two litres will let you pan plenty over a few hours though. Finish off with clean water or dump the last cupful or so from your pan into a bucket to deal with later, shovel out the tub as necessary and top up with the extra water.

 

[Occasional_panner]

Thank's mate, I'll look at is as a recon area, unless there is decent flow in the creeks, thanks for the advice.

 

[XIV]

Thank's mate, I'll look at is as a recon area, unless there is decent flow in the creeks, thanks for the advice.

There doesn't have to be a lot of flow in the creek, as long as there is clean water running into the area that you are pumping from. It may take 15-20 min for your dam to fill up, so do this first before setting up, I also run about 15m of hose, so by the time the water makes it back to my dam, most of the dirt has settled out. As for the photo of the banker above.
It works just fine if you are using it as a clean up sluice, to wash out cons at home.
As for in the field you would be lucky to get 10-15min before it turns to soup. When you run your banker, you wash the rock and left with clean cons,
after I have run my banker for the day, I run my hose into the bucket of cons for 15 min while I start packing up everything else. It washes the clay out of my cons that build up, so that when I get home and run it on clean up station, I don't have to keep changing the water over.