keeping gunk/hops out of the fermenter

I've got the paint strainer bags, instead of boiling hops IN them, would it be easier to pour the cooled wort THROUGH them into the bucket? They could be sanitized, and since meant to fit on a bucket top. I feel like you'd get a fair amount of aeration as well. Anyone doing this?

I think a number of people do that. I know that a number also simply line the bucket with a big "paint strainer" bag and pour the wort until it. Then just lift out the bag. However you want to do it is fine. I don't strain my wort but I do sometimes leave some of the gunk behind in the boil kettle if there is a lot of it!

I have a SS scrubber under my dip tube. I also use a large funnel with a medium grain bag filled with rice hulls in the funnel. Anything that gets by the scrubber usually gets filtered out in the rice hulls.

Rice hulls are really cheap and since I cool the wort in the kettle there are no tannin issues. Rice hulls get pitched in the yard waste and I rinse out the grain bag...easy clean up.

Yooper, that's exactly what I was thinking. Line the bucket, pour it all in, remove, squeeze. I'm clumsy, and I've had hops make it all the way to bottling. Not a bad thing per se, but I hate explaining why my delicious beer is so funky and murky. And I know EVERYONE here uses these as hop bags in the boil, that still freaks me out, boiling plastic. I know it's a minor concern, but if I can just line the bucket while it's sanitizing....pour through it, fewer chances of effing up and pouring the trub in like I normally do.

I do this as well. 5g paint strainer in my bottling bucket, cooled wort goes in, then drain the bottling bucket into my carboy. It doesn't catch 100% of everything, but catches most stuff. Also gives a nice clean yeast cake in the bottom.

Most of the time I do a whirlpool. It works well up to 4-5oz of pellets but any whole hops plug up the runoff. I've poured through a paint strainer too. If I'm not going to harvest the yeast I might just dump it all in.

I tie a 1 gallon paint strainer bag around my autosiphon. I get air in the siphon sometimes, but for the most part it works.