Harvesting rainwater for upstairs bathroom

[pachmarhi]

I want to be able to collect rainwater off the roof and would like to be able to use it for the toilet upstairs. Clearly I need a head of water to do that, but would like to avoid pumps. I was wondering about the possibility of running some guttering across the roof about half way down the roof slope and then feeding it into a tank in the loft. Anybody tried this? I've got to re-tile the roof anyway, so now seems like a good time to do this.

[northern installer]

perfectly possible,but you do have to be careful about things like overflow and water levels,how does your existing gutter level compare to toilet cistern level? if you are concerned about the energy used by a pump,have you considered a solar powered installation? if its just the one toilet,quite a small pump will do the necessary volume ,perhaps pumping into an attic header tank to allow several flushes at peak times.

[dhaslam]

If you are thinking in energy terms it would probably need more  to make the gutters than a lifetime of water pump use.    My parents house used water from the two storey roof to  feed a tank supplying toilets and kitchen downstairs. The upstairs tank was supplied by a petrol engine driven pump.  If modern pumps were available then the gravity system wouldn't have been used.