I'm in charge of an irrigation pump for a community garden. The pump draws out of an irrigation ditch which has varied depth, depending on how many other people are drawing out of the ditch, and where. There is a lot of vegetaion in the ditch, and a very fine clay bottem. I'm trying to figure out a better way to filter the water, so that the spinkler heads/pump filter don't have to be cleaned out every third day. Right now we have the intake inside a five gallon bucket. The bucket has holes punched in it on the downstream side, in an effort to make the majority of the plant material go around the intake area. A local hardware store reccomended a sand point laying in the bottem of the ditch to act as a screen, but the fine clay plugged it up almost immediately. I'm wondering if it might work to build a gravel/sand box in the bottem of the ditch(assuming I get permission from the ditch company), install the sand point in the middle of it, cover with more gravel and cover the gravel with some kind of fabric to keep the fines from sifting down too much? If this could work, would if be better to install the point vertically or horizontally? Btw, it is a 1/2 horse pump feeding four sprinklers to varying distances (supposedly all the pipe was sized accordingly by the irrigation company). Thanks