Made a sewage pump controller to alternate two ejection pumps

It is the opposite. The downstream pump runs independently.

The upstream pump is allowed to run, only when the downstream pump is not running.

The pumps have their own float switches, as always.

The controller is in the upstream well, where electric power comes in.

The main part of the controller is a current sensor relay. This is what detects that the downstream pump is running. The current sensor relay switches a solid state repay, which in turns turns on the power relay that enables the upstream pump.

i

And plus, I cannot just decide to lay pipes through other people's property and the railroad. And laying pipes is expensive. Building a controller is not.

No, the roof does not drain in it.

Somehow the water does get into this system when it rains, I have no idea why and I do not want to know.

i

OK. I don't know (or care) the relative storage capacities of the wells and pipes and had to make an assumption. This problem of dividing a limited resource like the AC power between competing demands can become very complex and subjective, a task for Generals. I guessed that you would want the well furthest from your property to overflow first. jsw

These demands are not competing, but complementing. Both of these pumps work together to remove sewage from my building.

i

They cooperate as long as it's convenient, while the flow is less than

50% of their pumping rates. If flow + groundwater infiltration (etc) raises the duty cycle of the distant pump above that you back up.

I don't mean to pick on you so here are different examples of the 'general' problem:

Patton needed to be supplied with 350,000 gallons of gas per day. As his supply line lengthened the trucks carrying it came to consume

300,000 gallons themselves per day. Once they left the supply depot the gasoline they carried became the limited resource to be shared between themselves and Patton.

Tanker trucks can deliver only the excess above what they need to drive out and back. Rommel found the practical limit to be around 700 miles from base.

An extreme case, like a multi-stage rocket:

It's rumored that SAC bombers headed for the USSR needed to take -all- the fuel from their tankers, which would then go down in the Arctic Ocean.

-jsw

That is impossible for a mostly sewage system..

I liked the SAC discussion.

i

I'm not talking about trenching and laying new pipes. I'm talking about either replumbing from the output of #1 pump (closest to you) to the input of #2 pump, or around the #2 pump, effectively bypassing it and the tanks in between. That would be done in existing space over the tanks. But if there's a several hundred foot head between your low position and the higher position of the sewer line, I see why the tanks are there. But that's why I asked.

If it's costing you extra pumping time/money or damaging your existing system, I'd think you'd want to know. And if the property (between you and the sewer) is sold and rebuilt, you could find some pretty nasty side-effects when they do.

Larry, this is not going to work and there is a reason why the wells are where they are. The only things wrong is that 1) They are hooked up to a building that I do not own and 2) The circuit is substandard.

i

OK. G'luck!