Rainwater collection pump question

Hi all, we've built our first ever rainwater collection system using two IBC tanks and now we need to connect it to our drip irrigation system in the garden. The challenge here is that the house is downhill from the garden, so we need to pump up (about 10 feet) to reach it and cannot rely on gravity.

Our plan is to buy a small transfer pump to meet our needs (which we calculate to be around 2.5 GPM and 30-35 PSI). We calculate our numbers based on getting the water up the 10' climb, and across about 130' of horizontal piping, using a 1" pipe.

This is new to us, so I'm hoping someone on here with experience in pumps can help answer a few questions, namely:

1. Do you have any recommendations of pumps that meet our requirements or brands that we should look for? Or any brands/pumps we should avoid?

2. We're planning to connect our pump to smart outlet so we can turn it on and off more easily over wifi, by simply turning the power to it on and off. Does anyone with experience with pumps know if that's a good idea or a possibly bad one? I'm not sure if pumps were designed to be turned on and off that way.

3. Because our totes are covered in black sheeting, we can't see when they're low/empty. Should we be concerned about what happens if the pump turns on when the tank is empty? Can that break the pump?

4. Any recommendations for a way to keep track of how much water the pump is actually pumping when it's on? Our system is normally connected to LinkTaps that have a water flow meter that tell us how many gallons are moving through it each pumping. Anything that might help us to do that with a pump?

Sorry for all the questions! We just wanna avoid investing in something that's not right for the job we have and/or breaking a perfectly good pump because we planned wrongly or bought the wrong one.

Thank you!!

Congrats!  I'm just finishing the delivery side of my system as well, collection is working fine

Will the pump be running the drip irrigation in the garden or just moving the water up to another holding tank at the level of the garden?  

We're using a shallow well pump from Harbor Freight, it's pressurizes the line and then shuts off automatically, when the pressure drops it starts back up and runs until it brings the line back to the preset pressure.  You would need a garden hose type timer to shut off the drip, which would intern shut off the pump but that would work great.  Here are my answers (opinions of course) on your questions.

1.  I would look at a pressure type pump, I'm using harbor freight pumps, cheap and you can get a service plan pretty cheap to replace them if they fail prematurely.

2.  A pressure pump wouldn't need the smart outlet.  If you don't go with a pressure pump and need to turn it on/off remotely be sure that your "smart outlet" can handle the inductive load created by a pump motor.

3.  Running a pump dry is bad, usually very bad.  Most pumps won't last more than a minute or two with no water flowing through them.  You'll have to figure out a way to stop the pump when the water is close to running out.

4.  The same style flow meter should be able to be used on the output of the pump.

For stopping the pump when the water is gone a simple float switch can be installed in the tank, would need to be a "normally closed" float switch, should be able to find one on amazon.  The pump plugs into it and it acts like a simple switch.  If the float is "floating" then the switch is on, when the float is no longer floating it shuts the switch off.  This with a pressure style pump and maybe a yard hydrant up in the garden and you should be good to go.

Short questions, long answers; I suggest you talk with a local pump place, after you have learnt what you can from here.
1. Do you have any recommendations of pumps that meet our requirements or brands that we should look for? Or any brands/pumps we should avoid?
PUMPS ARE AVAILABLE WHICH WILL NOT BURN OUT IF THE WATER TANK IS EMPTY.
PUMPS WITH PRESSURE CONTROLS AND A PRESSURE TANK ARE GOOD AND WORK WITH THE FLOAT SWITCH JASON SPOKE OF.
2. We're planning to connect our pump to smart outlet so we can turn it on and off more easily over wifi, by simply turning the power to it on and off.
THE BEST FERTTILISER ON A PROPERTY IS THE FARMERS FOOTPRINT, COULD YOU WALK OVER AND TURN IT OFF?

3. Because our totes are covered in black sheeting, we can't see when they're low/empty. Should we be concerned about what happens if the pump turns on when the tank is empty? Can that break the pump?
FIT A FLOAT LEVEL INDICATOR- EASILY MADE
4. Any recommendations for a way to keep track of how much water the pump is actually pumping when it's on? Our system is normally connected to LinkTaps that have a water flow meter that tell us how many gallons are moving through it each pumping. Anything that might help us to do that with a pump?
FIR A METER AFTER THE PUMP