Distance Pumping

Distance Pumping

I was invited by a few mates into an area that has seen very little work over the years. The area consisted of large river sand bars and required the need to pump up to 150 meters or a bit better, the only gold found there was flood gold. I had the use of a 4-stroke Honda WX15AX2 this is a general purpose self-priming pump that gives 72 gals./min with a total head lift of 125 ft, the suction head lift can be 26 ft if required with a dry weight of 19.8 lbs, a top little unit indeed.
Seeing I was working with a pump I was unfamiliar with I though this may be interesting, one of the very first points you will notice when you move water over a long distance is the fuel consumption of the pumps motor. If you try this type of work with a little pump and motor such as the Honda WX10 or the small Chinese two strokes you will need a lot and I mean a lot of fuel. Them poor little pumps work hard at distance, you will be forever walking back to them for refuelling, it will drive you nuts. Anything over a hundred meters is just too much for such pumps, you will find that they will burn out very quickly.
From the pump for the first hundred odd meters I run a two inch lay flat hose, stepped down into a 1 ½ inch lay flat hose, if need be I can step down to a 1 inch lay flat if required. Let me explain why I run my hoses out in such a fashion. Friction loss is a real pain and it is quite evident over a long distance. The aim of this over bore in the layflat is to make the layflat into a manifold so that the spray bars are using way less volume of water than the length of layflat is delivering to the Banjo this will make getting pressure at the spray bars much easier with a transfer pump ,it is how the ol timers got pressure to the tip of their water monitors. If you were to run the whole length at one inch lay flat hose, you would find your jetting power is virtually nil to very poor and that is out of a bigger pump under full throttle. On my 2 inch lay flat hose I have fitted 1 ½ inch polypropylene camlock fittings, I used to run the old polypropylene screw nut and tail jointers but over the years the sand destroyed the threads they reached a stage where replacements were required. The camlock fittings are much easier to work with easy to use easier to joint your hose they are recommended. Even though the 2 inch hose is reduced at the joints it is the length that pays out in the reduction of friction loss. I run mostly 20 meter lengths rolled up on garden hose reels, with the odd 10 to 15 meter lengths for when I am just that little bit short on my chosen area.

The work area



Camp fire, great yarns and a beer what more can you ask for.



My gold from that trip.




To get an idea of just how much gold I have found out in the field, I use a one cent coin as a guide. Due to the fact that at times every thing gets wet. One gram of gold is almost equal to a fully covered one cent coin.





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