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I've been working on a recirculating highbanker for about 3 years now and wanted to share what I've learned so far and see what other miners think aboult recirculating water to process material.  (posted the latest videos on GPS today)

When we first started we just used 55 gal of water with a 70 gal feed tub and placed a 5 gal bucket into the supply tub to collect the highbanker tailings. This allowed us to process 24-25 buckets of material before we needed to replace the water. I quickly learned that my honda pump seal did not like pumping dirty water.

The next season I made some modifications and tried a large pool filter to clean up the water but the filter plugged  with only one bucket. I then build a tailing screen using 60 mesh wire cloth which prevented anything larger than 60 mesh from entering the supply tank. The tailing screen increased our material runs to 32-34 buckets befor needing a water change.

The following year I worked on a vortex filter to collect the heavier -60 material that passed through the tailing screen and have had some success with this design as we can easily run 60+ buckets of -1/2" material.

The real issue is the susspended clays which are too small to be collected in the vortex. I am just now experimenting with alum to collect or flock theses suspended clays to be removed from the system, but haven't quite figured it out yet...

I now carry 125 gal of water, 300 feet of hose (to gravity fill the system) and built a cart for the vortex tank. My goal is to filter the supply water enough to process at least 100 buckets before needing a water change.

There are many videos on my YT channel showing the various stages of my system if interested. https://www.youtube.com/user/R0TGRUB?feature=mhee

I'm hoping that the GPS mining community can continue to give me advice and their knowledge regarding this type of recirculating system. It is a great concept for the desert and other dry creek areas, not to mention the ability to run material next to a river where triditional HB is not allowed. I've had some good discussions over at the ICMJ's forum but that seems to have run it course so here I am...