When the lake first opened there were four Woolf compound rotative beam pumping engines, housed in two separate buildings. They were built by Glenfield & Kennedy of Kilmarnock between 1900 and 1905. The engine's beam is long and weighs 17 tons. The flywheel is in diameter and weighs 20 tons, having a crank throw of . Each beam engine had an output of at 17 rpm. The high-pressure cylinders, in diameter and with a stroke, were supplied by steam from horizontal Lancashire-type twin flue boilers with Green's economisers at . The low-pressure cylinder was in diameter and has a stroke. Three engines with a fourth on standby could pump water at a rate of per day, whilst the boilers consumed 8.5 tons of coal per day. A mechanical efficiency of 90% was claimed, the diameter pump bucket, strike and plunger diameter of gave a pump output of per stroke. They ran until 1949, when two engines from the north engine house were replaced by electric pumps. In 1950 automatic shutdown equipment was installed to prevent damage in the event of a burst main or overloading of the new electric pumps. This meant that it was no longer essential to have staff on site 24 hours a day. The decorative chimney was shortened in the 1960s. In 2014 new split-case vertical pumps and various other new equipment was installed to replace those installed in the 1940s and 1950s.