Rick Ness Messed Up BIG Time And Wasted $150K Stupid Mistake
Rick Ness Messed Up BIG Time And Wasted $150K Stupid Mistake
Rick Ness Messed Up BIG Time And Wasted $150K Stupid Mistake
And I know it seems crazy.
Brand new pump.
Twelve inch.
Sounds like that’s perfect —
but pressure-wise… it’s not the right pump.
How?
$150,000.
That’s how much Rick Ness flushed away
on a machine that was supposed to save him.
After taking a year off to deal with his personal demons,
his return to Gold Rush
was a high-stakes bet on himself.
But that bet went south
the moment he fired up his brand new water pump.
What many overlooked
was a tiny detail —
a fundamental flaw in his plan
that created a cascade of failures.
This wasn’t bad luck.
It was a self-inflicted wound.
A stupid mistake
that left his crew stranded
and has come back in ashes.
“We’re not getting water for some reason.”
“That’s what — we’re sucking air in there.”
“Now that you got water to it, it’s completely leaking everywhere.”
“Oh yeah — this whole piece is cracked.”
“We need to reweld it.”
The steel heart of the operation.
Rick Ness was a man running from ghosts.
After stepping away from the gold fields for a year
to wrestle with his mental health,
his return wasn’t just about finding gold.
It was about finding himself again.
The thing nobody tells you about the Yukon
is that it demands more than just your sweat.
It demands your soul.
And for Rick,
putting his boots back on that frozen ground
was a monumental step.
He was betting everything on this comeback —
his reputation,
his finances,
and the loyalty of the crew
who had put their faith in him.
To put it mildly,
the pressure was immense.
He knew he couldn’t just pick up where he left off.
The game had changed.
And his old battered equipment
wasn’t going to cut it.
To hit the kind of numbers he was dreaming of —
the kind that would make the industry stand up and take notice —
he needed a serious upgrade.
“This was a big investment.
$150,000 we got to make up in gold.
Just pay this pump off.”
His entire operation hinged on one critical element.
Water.
Lots of it.
And moving with incredible force.
A wash plant is a hungry beast,
and without a powerful stream of water
to churn through tons of pay dirt,
it’s just a giant lawn ornament.
His old pump was tired, inefficient,
and bleeding him dry on fuel costs.
The answer seemed obvious.
Go big, or go home.
And so, the decision was made.
Rick pulled the trigger
on a $150,000 behemoth —
a 12-inch Cornell water pump.
This wasn’t just a purchase.
It was a statement.
A declaration
that he was back,
and meant business.
This pump was supposed to be the new steel heart of his operation —
a Titan capable of moving a staggering
6,000 gallons of water per minute.
That’s enough to fill an average backyard swimming pool
in about three minutes flat.
The investment was terrifying.
That $150,000 had to be clawed back from the ground —
ounce by painful ounce —
before he could even think about profit.
“Suction line’s on. Everything’s ready. Everything’s in place.”
“Look at that — what a beauty.”
It was a massive gamble,
but Rick saw it as a necessary one.
The arrival of the pump was a major event.
The crew gathered around
as the massive piece of machinery,
gleaming under the Yukon sun,
was carefully lowered into place.
You can see this everywhere in the gold fields —
a new piece of iron
always brings a sense of hope.
A feeling that this is the tool
that will finally change their fortunes.
There was a palpable sense of excitement.
This was it —
the key to unlocking the millions hidden in Rally Valley.
They spent days meticulously setting it up,
connecting the massive hoses,
and triple-checking every fitting.
The anticipation was building.
“How did that, man?”
“Three inch.”
“That’s it. Soon as we get the suction hooked up,
we can fire this pump up.”
“I’m so excited. Locked and loaded.”
This pump wasn’t just a machine.
It was the physical embodiment of Rick’s comeback.
The engine of his redemption.
But as they prepared to flip the switch for the very first time,
a tiny overlooked detail in a custom-made part
was about to turn their dreams
into a full-blown crisis.
What seemed like a simple startup
was about to go horribly wrong.
Locked and loaded.
The call went out.
The switch was flipped.
And the $150,000 pump roared to life
with a satisfying growl.
Up at the wash plant — Monster Red —
the crew held its breath,
waiting for the gushing torrent of water.
They waited.
And waited.
Nothing.
Back at the pump,
confusion turned to panic.
The engine was running perfectly —
but the lines were dry.
“We got no water anywhere.”
The horrifying realization began to sink in.
Their brand-new, season-making machine
was failing on its very first test.
The initial diagnosis was frantic.
In a complex system like this,
the problem could be anything —
a blockage, a bad seal, a faulty valve.
The crew swarmed the intake line,
and that’s when they found it.
A hairline crack.
In a custom-welded reducer fitting —
a piece designed by their own mechanic, Buzz,
to connect the massive 12-inch pump
to the slightly smaller intake hose.
The most shocking fact?
Something so small
had caused such a catastrophic failure.
Like a straw with a hole in it,
the crack was sucking in air,
creating a vacuum lock
that prevented the pump from ever pulling water.
It was a rookie mistake —
a tiny flaw in a single weld
that had neutered their giant killer.
Frustration mounted,
but the problem seemed fixable.
They fired up a welder,
laid a fresh bead over the crack,
sealing the air leak for good.
Confidence was cautiously restored.
“Round two,” Rick declared,
trying to rally his troops.
The pump was fired up again.
This time, water surged into the lines.
For a moment —
it looked like they had solved it.
But up at the plant,
the pressure was still pathetically low.
It was a stream,
not a fire hose.
And then —
a new, more violent problem emerged.
The immense suction from the now properly sealed pump
was too much for the old intake hose.
A section of the hose,
weakened by years of wear and tear,
suddenly collapsed on itself —
pinched shut,
as if by an invisible giant’s hand.
They had fixed one problem
only to create another.
The power of the new pump
was now working against them,
destroying the very infrastructure meant to feed it.
What many overlooked
was that upgrading one component
puts immense strain on all the others.
It’s a chain —
and they had just discovered their weakest link.
More delays.
More cutting.
More refitting.
More wasted time.
Every hour of downtime in the Yukon
is an hour of lost gold.
And the expenses don’t stop —
fuel, wages, equipment leases —
the meter is always running.
They were now days behind schedule,
burning through money
with nothing to show for it.
After fixing the hose,
they prepared for a third attempt.
A sense of dread hung heavy in the air.
This had to work.
But the thing nobody tells you
is that sometimes the real problem
isn’t the one you can see.
The true $150,000 mistake
was yet to be discovered.
A miner’s worst nightmare.
Third time’s the charm —
or so they hoped.
The pump was fired up once more.
The engine screamed.
The hose held firm.
And water flowed.
But the result was the same.
A weak, anemic stream
trickled out of the wash plant spray bars.
It was enough to get the dirt wet,
but nowhere near the violent, high-pressure blast
needed to separate gold from heavy clay and rock.
To put it mildly —
it was useless.
Rick Ness stood in disbelief.
His $150,000 investment
was performing worse than his old, worn-out pump.
The crew was silent.
The gravity of the situation
crushing them.
This wasn’t a simple fix anymore.
This was a fundamental failure.
Desperate,
Rick called in his lead mechanic, Ryan,
for a full diagnostic.
Ryan was methodical —
attaching pressure gauges,
checking suction and discharge lines,
calculating flow rates,
running the numbers.
He was testing the very heart of the machine.
The results that came back
were baffling — and horrifying.
The pump was working perfectly.
In fact,
it was exceeding its specifications —
moving a colossal amount of water.
The numbers, as the manufacturer confirmed,
were perfect.
And that’s when
the devastating truth finally came to light.
Rick had bought a volume pump,
not a pressure pump.
You see —
and this is the core
of the $150,000 mistake —
not all pumps are created equal.
A volume pump is designed
to move huge quantities of liquid from one place to another.
Like draining a lake.
It’s a river mover.
A pressure pump, on the other hand,
is designed to force that water out
with incredible velocity —
like a fire hose.
For a wash plant,
you need that pressure —
to act like a liquid jackhammer,
blasting apart the pay dirt.
Rick’s pump could move a river —
but it came out
with all the force of a garden hose.
He had bought the wrong tool for the job.
