Pictured below is another of our rainwater toilet pump controllers  which we recently built and supplied.

This particular unit will be used in a system configured as follows:
There is a large water butt with 2000 litre capacity (to which a further 1000 litre capacity will soon be added). There is a 210 litre header tank which gravity feeds the toilets in the property. The header tank has a float switch near the top to detect when it is full, and a float switch near the bottom to detect when it is nearly empty. The pump chosen can fill the header tank from empty in around 6 minutes, and the pump has its own float switch protection (so that it will not run dry if the water butt is empty). Finally there is a solenoid valve fitted to a mains water supply which when turned on, will fill the header tank.

The controller has a display which is used to show the status of the header tank – full, not full, or empty – and also the status of the pump and solenoid valve.

Once an hour, the controller will turn on the pump if the upper float switch indicates that the header tank is not full. The pump will run until the upper float switch floats on a full tank OR for 8 minutes since if the pump runs that long, the water butt must be empty or there is a problem with the pump.

If at any time (except while the pump is running) the lower float switch indicates that the header tank is empty, the solenoid valve will open sending mains water into the header tank until the upper float switch indicates the tank is now full.
After another hour has passed, the controller will attempt to top up the tank with rainwater as normal, and will only top it up with mains water if the tank is empty.

If you need a rainwater toilet pump controller, email neil@reuk.co.uk with details of your requirements. Take a look at some of our previous controllers here: rainwater.